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Chapter Text

After the second security officer sought to discreetly waylay her while they sought her parents, Eirtaé Frizmar started keeping a copy of her official documents in easy reach. It didn’t help nearly as much as it should’ve. Naboo was possibly the only planet that defined adulthood by merit rather than age, and people kept assuming her documentation was forged.

Maybe she should’ve sought a more direct courier to Kiffex, but taking public transport to Thyferra would make her trip easier to “spin” to her advantage. All she had to do was negotiate the purchase of extra bacta for treating the results of the invasion, and she could call it personal or professional, helping Queen Amidala or promoting her own career.

Assuming she could negotiate the purchase of extra bacta. The local newscasts were reeling over some leaked data alleging a production shortage.

Convenient, considering the recent invasion of Naboo. Core worlds didn’t experience the wars that would increase demand for bacta, and Naboo was one of the Mid Rim worlds that could afford top quality.

Another security officer’s focus sharpened on her. She sighed and reached for her documentation.

“Frizmar,” said a woman’s voice, and the security officer’s attention relaxed.

Eirtaé glanced towards the speaker, a cloaked Human who felt older than her posture suggested. She shifted her weight so she could more easily grab her holdout blaster, if warranted. “Yes?”

The woman brushed over Eirtaé with the Force, and she strode off in a wordless command to follow.

But who did this woman work for? Only Vos and Tholme knew where she was, theoretically, but maybe the chancellor had put a flag on her ID. House heirs didn’t use public transport, so that could’ve caught his attention…but she’d fled Naboo after learning her legal father couldn’t be her biological one. (All the safer for the queen’s other handmaidens, so none would be thought her friends.) Would the chancellor truly move so quickly?

All she had were questions.

Eirtaé carefully adjusted the bag on her shoulder so she could keep her hands tucked in her sleeves and thereby by her blaster, and followed the stranger so she could get some answers.

The spaceport was moderately busy, healthy without being so crowded that she couldn’t see beyond a few feet ahead of her, and the air smelled more of the fuel and oil of the ships than the sweat and perfumes of the people. Eirtaé didn’t need to use the Force at all, to keep the woman’s hood in view.

Not that line of sight was constant, and not that the woman was the only one with a cloak and hood, but nobody else blended that size, posture, and stride.

When the path entered a small worn building, nooked away from the crowd or the security sweeps, Eirtaé glanced around and entered with her blaster at ready.

And shot the foot that came at her face.

The  woman leapt back without a sound beyond the sizzle of her boot, and kept  her body angled for defense as she studied Eirtaé comparably to how Tholme had watched Padmé. “You followed me. Why?”

Because you told me to would be the foolish answer. That was obviously part of it.

“You’re like Tholme,” she answered, instead.

“Huh.” The woman removed her cloak, tossed it over the old chair that looked least unsteady. Her hair was short and white, though she moved with the ease of someone south of middle age. “You’re younger than I expected.”

Was that honest commentary, or just fishing for her reaction to potential insults? “I leave for Kiffex in a few hours.”

“Do you?”

The challenge reminded Eirtaé of her father—as in, the man that raised her, not the man who she had recently realized was probably her biological parent. The tact, the plausible deniability—those were more like the latter man, except this woman wasn’t trying to trigger Eirtaé’s sympathy.

“Do you have evidence supporting your claim that my itinerary has been changed?” Eirtaé asked, instead of repeating herself.

The woman smiled.

There was an odd disquiet in the Force, that morning.

Obi-Wan tried to relax into the meditation to find the source, but it remained elusive. Maybe it was just his lingering uneasiness from last night, when a woman he loved had broken a promise, a high councilor he respected had revealed she was broken, and a ghost he hadn’t expected had butted into a conversation with his padawan and helped them through a communication failure.

No wonder he was struggling to meditate.

The hum of an approaching speeder caught his ear, growing louder quickly enough that it was headed straight for the villa.

He headed down to the main area to greet the guest and found Master Billaba—Depa—already seated at the table beside Anakin, munching a savory-smelling pastry and showing him something on a flimsiplast. In Huttese.

He blinked. “I didn’t know you knew that language.”

And when did she even arrive? (And, if she was already here, who was in that approaching speeder?)

“La, h’bolkubok,” she answered absently, sounding as much like her usual high councilor self as she looked. She glanced over his aura, giving him clear view of the small bandage above one eye.

She straightened abruptly, suddenly alert in a way that reminded him of Mandalore and sent a shiver climbing up his back. “Apologies,” Depa said, not nearly sedately enough to soothe him. “I…enjoy the language.”

Anakin snorted.

Humor tugged the edges of her eyes and lips, and she allowed, “After a fashion.”

The speeder docked and shut off.

Depa didn’t even glance that way before plucking another pastry from the platter in the middle of the table and throwing it towards the balcony.

Quinlan paused midstride as he caught it, then swaggered into a chair. “Morning. Well, morning side of noon-ish.”

Obi-Wan blinked and glanced out the balcony, realizing it was far later than he’d thought. Just how long had he been failing to meditate? He’d have to tell Anakin to interrupt him, when that happened.

Depa frowned at Quin, who was focused on his food. “I slept more than you.”

“Uh-huh.”

She scowled.

“So how’s Padmé?” Anakin piped up. “She was with Master, uh… Siri?”

Quinlan paused mid-bite.

Depa snorted. “Of course she called you.”

Anxiety pulsed in Anakin.

Quinlan set his pastry down on a serving plate, pushed back from the table without getting up.

“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan said politely, “but I seem to be missing part of this conversation. Would someone please fill me in?”

Depa rolled her eyes, her fingers running over something in an interior pocket. “A bounty hunter had to stage a genuine attack on Siri and Amidala.”

Stage…genuine…? “So you intercepted?” he guessed, though that wasn’t her reputation.

Her eyes lit up with the hopefulness that had been so disturbing the night before, before dulling into its usual calm.

And that way of thinking about it made Obi-Wan all the more uneasy. Depa was reminding him of Satine, who’d been trained to kill and had to actively choose not to.

Quinlan still hadn’t returned to eating, as if waiting for something. Anakin was hunched into his seat, as if trying to disappear.

Without losing the calm, Depa pulled her hand from her pocket, revealing that she’d been holding the bes’bev (Mandaloran flute) he’d seen in his holocall to her the night before. She set it beside her plate and stroked it thoughtfully while she finished her pastry.

Then lunged over the table at Quin.

Who flipped his chair to smack her in the face, interrupting her jump.

“What?!” Obi-Wan blurted, as Depa rolled on the floor in laughter.

“Just a game,” Quinlan said lightly, though the way he was eyeing her and held himself at ready belied that.

Anakin coughed. He’d backed up against the wall, holding the flimsy, and the way he watched Depa was both anxious and understanding. He swallowed hard and said, “You shouldn’t do that.”

Both the other Jedi froze.

“You shouldn’t take it out on him,” Anakin insisted.

Quin was between Depa and Anakin before Obi-Wan could blink. It was defensive, as if he actually expected her to possibly attack the boy she was staring at.

Depa felt sharp in the Force, like a predator out for prey.

Anakin shivered but lifted his chin, biting his lip, and met her gaze.

“Okay,” Quinlan said quietly. “What are you looking at, Depa?”

Her attention snapped to him with a glare. “I know what he is!”

He just watched her.

“…Ally,” she said reluctantly, her glare morphing into a scowl. “E chu taa!” She shoved herself away and stalked off.

Quinlan grabbed his pastry from the table, tossed another on a plate in front of Obi-Wan. “And…?” he called after her.

“I know, Quin!” she yelled back, not stopping.

He sighed and straightened the table and messed-up chair, relaxing and settling into his meal with relish as if Depa hadn’t just acted insane.

“Pit-sick,” Anakin said, sounding as if he recognized the situation.

Quinlan glanced at him. “Not market-sick?”

Anakin shook his head. “Market-sick is when you’ve been sold so much that you stop being able to do anything of value, so your masters keep selling you. Pit-sick is when you’re so used to the pits that you can’t see anything else.”

His padawan then tapped the table in front of Obi-Wan, reminding him of his own meal. “Are you going to eat that?”

“If you want more food than what’s provided, just ask,” Quinlan said, returning to his meal. “Paddy won’t mind.”

“Oh.”

“You know Paddy?” Obi-Wan asked aloud, even while he cringed at the alert of something else he hadn’t thought about his padawan needing to know.

Quinlan raised an eyebrow at him, a silent, ’You know I can’t admit things directly,’ so yes, he did. And the circumstances were classified. Maybe Paddy was groundskeeper here between jobs for Judicial?

Obi-Wan mentally caught himself before his hypotheses got too ridiculous. Quin had probably just researched the villa on his way here.

And those terms Anakin had used for Depa, with Quin accepting them, suggested— “Depa was a slave?”

“Yeah,” Anakin answered. “I figured it out last night, when she got here.” He cringed and added to Quinlan, “I also figured out…uh…the other thing.”

Quin didn’t so much as pause in his chewing. “Uh-huh.”

Anakin watched him carefully for a moment, then huffed in relief.

“I don’t understand,” Obi-Wan said, feeling lost. “What happened?”

Quinlan ignored him, which meant he couldn’t answer.

“Am I the age…?” Anakin struggled for words, then mumbled, “She-doesn’t-know-if-the-kid-survived.”

The kid?

Quin froze, temper rising as he stared at Anakin. “What.”

“She said you’d be mad about that.”

“And you’re testing how we react when angry or defied,” Quinlan said, voice clipped as he shoved fury into the Force, “because she would’ve forbidden you to talk about it.”

There was an obvious conclusion Obi-Wan could draw from the talk about the two Jedi and a child, but it didn’t feel right. “You and Depa…?”

“What?” Genuine horror spilled from Quinlan. “No! Frip no. I don’t— Just, no.” He grabbed his comm and dialed, then switched to Kiffa to tell off the person who answered.

From the recipient’s handful of attempts to get a word in edgewise, Obi-Wan figured out it was Tholme before Quinlan wound down and the man on the other end said, “He’s not a Jedi.”

“He’s alive, then?” Anakin piped up.

The pause that followed was an implicit scold, judging from Quin’s scowl. “You told Skywalker?”

“Depa told Skywalker.” Quinlan ate another bite, and silence persisted through that. “He aged out this year, then?”

The comm stayed quiet, then had the sound of a hang-up.

Quin’s expression tightened. He dialed again, hitting a message box. “Hey, Sar, if you look up the age-outs for this past year and where they ended up, I’d appreciate a copy. Thanks—oh, and add the upcoming ones to that? My master might’ve just pulled a fuzzy on me.” Then someone else. “Lake Country Port, Naboo. Come pick up your corvette before she hares off again.”

He shut down his comm and returned to the meal.

“Depa has a son?” Obi-Wan asked, horrified. Not at the birth, exactly—accidents could happen—but Initiates aged out at thirteen. She wasn’t much older than he was! She must’ve been… His stomach churned. “How?”

“Pit-sick,” Anakin repeated, as if that answered his question.

Obi-Wan stared at him, realizing…if he understood the ‘pit-sick’ as a reference to gladiator pits, that could explain a lot. He turned and looked in the direction that Depa had gone, but he didn’t see her. “She perceives people in terms of…alliance?”

“More like everyone’s a potential enemy. Or almost everyone—I’m pretty sure she doesn’t think of Garen like…” Quinlan stared at nothing as Paddy set another platter of pastries on the table.

“Master Quinlan, sir?” Anakin asked.

He relaxed and plucked a steaming pastry from the new platter. “Never mind.”

“How is this possible?” Obi-Wan asked. “She’s a high councilor.”

“Juniormost member,” Quin agreed. “It suits her.”

He couldn’t be serious.

Quinlan gave a little smile and shrug first, then turned serious. “The juniormost role is essentially a loner who acts as a fill-in for the various subsidiary functions that councilors can get up to.” He glanced at Anakin and said something in Huttese, probably translating.

“Oh,” Anakin said. “Okay. I thought the council was like a…” He switched languages, and their conversation continued like that.

Obi-Wan couldn’t understand enough of what they were saying to be of any help—but then, wasn’t that the point? Quinlan was talking Anakin through a language barrier to help smoothen the teaching process.

They weren’t the only ones here, though, and Depa… If she was ‘pit-sick’, was it really a good idea to leave her alone?

His stomach churned to the point that he didn’t think he’d be able to eat, though he needed to. She probably did, too, so Obi-Wan put a few fresh savory pastries on his plate and went looking for Depa.

The compress held water, not bacta, but the chill was sufficient to soothe his face. Jango Fett was pretty sure the jetii he’d fought had cracked a few bones, but Dooku had retaliated for his failure by confiscating his medical supplies.

At least, Jango assumed Dooku was behind customs conveniently claiming ‘contamination’ on even fresh, unopened packets. He had failed on the targets, and that brought a great deal of risk to the Sith.

Jango rinsed and wrung out his cold compress for reapplication. Considering Tachi’s reaction to what Dooku had done to his own padawan, odds were good that the Jedi-turned-Sith wouldn’t think anything of retaliating against Boba, much less any of Jango’s allies here.

So, though he ached and would be a walking bruise come morning, he wasn’t hauling himself to the store or a med center to restock.

Just for the day, which would be long enough for the swelling and pain to really set in, then he’d see to treatment. There wouldn’t be any lasting damage from that, and masters liked knowing their examples had hit lasting pain.

Jango grimaced. The Kaminoans still needed him, fortunately, and a note appended to his latest medical report had warned that electrocution or asphyxiation would be particularly damaging to the genetic material.

He conveniently ignored the implications of the addendum being signed by “AR2”. He did not want to piss off a witch who had allies like that jetii woman who had beat him to a standstill without going berserker.

(The jetii had even bothered to keep bystanders out of it.)

(Except for those bruisers who were beating protection money out of someone.)

His public comm rang again—Taun We, checking on him.

He sighed and tapped for audio only, though she was smart enough to understand the implications of that. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll come see Boba day after next.”

Hopefully the day off, recuperating, would reassure her that he was taking proper care of himself, and dissuade her from trying to bring a medic or med droid. The situation with the jetii was dangerous enough without that.

“What happened?” Taun We asked.

(Ancestors, that fight had been the most fun he’d had in ages.)

“Stalemate,” Jango said. “My target had an ally who delayed me long enough for them to escape kill range.”

Now he just had to wait for Dooku to decide if it was worth hunting the witch and her alleged teacher further, since killing someone after they reported in was a good way to increase how seriously others took the report.

Maybe he’d pick up a smaller job in the Core, regardless, so he could see about getting his flute back.

The scent of Grandma Thule’s hsuberry candles soothed Padmé as she relaxed into the mattress…until she realized what, precisely, she was sensing.

This wasn’t the palace.

She jolted awake, and dishes rattled downstairs, as if the person holding them had startled.

Padmé stared around her bedroom in her parents’ house, struggling to focus through bleary eyes, and unsure how she’d even gotten here. The last thing she’d remembered was falling asleep on Siri’s ship, after they were attacked by Jango Fett.

The footsteps coming up the stairs were sure and steady, without being slow, and her mother sidled in the room with a tray of steaming food. “You’ve lost too much weight,” Mom said, though she could stand to regain a little, herself. “Eat. Explain why my f…”

Padmé dug into the gripper fish over kelp noodles. “I’m not avoiding your food,” she insisted hurriedly—and truthfully, because her mother was quite adept at scenting lies. (Also an excellent cook.)

Mom smiled a little as she watched Padmé. Surely she hadn’t looked that thin?

Dad came in behind Mom, with another tray—smaller servings for both of them, so they were all going to eat with her. In her room. As if she was sick.

Padmé looked at her parents in confusion. “Mom, Dad, you know I love this, but…why? I’m fine.”

Her parents didn’t even look at each other, and Dad didn’t react.

Mom, though… Her expression pinched up. “That’s not what my fa—” She cut herself off and stabbed the plate with her fork.

Dad rubbed Mom’s back, gently. “The Jedi said you weren’t. In fact, he was quite irked with us for not telling him, ourselves.”

“That’s not quite what upset him,” Mom murmured.

Dad shrugged. “From a certain point of view.”

They exchanged a quick smile, indicating one of their inside jokes.

Padmé stared at them in confusion. “‘He’? I was with Siri.”

The quick glance they shared was their normal when checking if one knew more than the other about something.

After a long moment—and something in the Force, though Padmé couldn’t focus enough to tell what—Mom sighed and grabbed her plate. “I’ll go check on the custard.”

That left Padmé with her father, who ate in a pointed reminder for her to keep at her own meal.

She let a few bites pass before she asked, “Why am I here and not the palace?”

“Master Tholme brought you,” Dad answered easily. “His professional medical opinion was that you needed to sleep a few days, and he trusted us to handle that.” Or, at least, he did went unsaid, as if the Jedi had learned something he hadn’t known before and had thereby lost that faith in them.

“Dad?” Padmé asked uncertainly.

He sighed. “My mother… You take after her more than anyone realizes. After her sister left the Jedi, she tracked down her sister’s crechemates and dragged Jobal’s mother into the ensuing…adventures. Master Tholme was one of those crechemates.”

That could explain how much Nana had known about the Order, but… “She said Master Tholme was the only Jedi she knew.”

“She lied,” Dad said promptly, as if he was used to his mother doing that. “Or perhaps she meant he’s the only Jedi she knew well who’s still alive, which might be true. Master Tholme thought we were less aware of that than we are.”

“He is right that you need sleep, though,” her mother cut in, returning with a tray of shuura fruit custard. “ You’ve been under far too much stress, and you’re not taking care of yourself. Eat, and then go back to sleep.”

It was only later, after Padmé had enjoyed her favorite dessert and as she was drifting off, that she had the groggy thought that Mom had sounded remarkably like a Jedi planting a suggestion.

Chapter Text

The taste of iron filled Eirtaé’s mouth, and she spat the blood onto the stained flooring. “Don’t break my teeth!”

“Then keep your face away from my boot,” said the woman who was surely a case example of why Vos had wanted to organize her lessons himself, rather than let Tholme take care of it.

“I’m a House heir!” she snapped. “If you break my teeth, I have to get replacements grown, and that’ll draw attention to how I broke them.” Ancestors forbid a House heir have anything but natural body parts.

The narrowed blue-eyed gaze conveyed as much dubiousness as the scowl did.

“If you’ll restrain your assault, I’ll pull the protocol for you.” If Eirtaé’s irritation showed more than was strictly proper, well, introducing yourself to someone by saying you’re their teacher and proceeding to beat them up was usually illegal.

“You have protocol for injuries?”

“It’s… We have reason.” She kept a wary eye on the woman as she called up the Code for Those Born in Sunlight. Come to think of it, she herself needed to read over the Starlight and Moonlight codes, for Amidala and herself respectively.

(…Did the Starlight-born even know the codes? And come to think of it, were these actually laws, like her father insisted, or just proper etiquette? Were these even accurate etiquette manuals, or just references leveraged by abusers to claim they were universal rules?)

“Ancestors,” she muttered. “What’s your comm code? I’ll forward you copies.”

They exchanged another long look, and she realized the other woman was wary.

“I’m not a Sith!” Eirtaé insisted.

“No,” the woman agreed, frowning. “But you’re no Jedi, either.”

As if she wanted to be one?

Something softened in the sharp blue eyes. “I’m known as the Dark Woman.”

Eirtaé raised her eyebrows. Someone who self-identified as Darkened had no room to contest shades of gray. “Why?”

“I am but a servant of the Force. I am my service, and service has no name.”

Shaak kark, Eirtaé bit her tongue to keep from saying, so she could keep focus on “Why do you call yourself that?”

“I don’t. It is the moniker others use for me, and therefore it is how I am known.”

At least she’s logically consistent? Eirtaé stared at her, tentatively seeking a sense of her aura. Wasn’t depersonalization a sign of a personality disorder? Or combat stress? (The latter being what Eirtaé herself was probably going to end up with by the end of her two weeks here, if their introduction was any indication.)

“And you don’t call yourself anything?” she double-checked.

“I am my service to the Force.”

“…I understand,” Eirtaé said, fearing she actually did.

Jedi Master Mace Windu was not hiding.

His jaw ached something awful, and his eyes throbbed in time with his heartbeat, so he was taking a well-earned respite from the demands of his position as Master of the Order. His refuge was one of the lower-level meditation gardens that most had forgotten about and the Temple had stopped tending, probably generations ago. The surviving plants subsisted on the Force and bits of refracted light, producing a wild strangeness that felt unnatural to most.

For Mace, sitting here in the cool quiet dark, on a stone retaining wall barely visible from the overgrowth, was the closest he could get to the environment of his native Haruun Kal. He was Korun, born in and of the Force-filled jungle, not the greed-filled city, and sometimes he felt it.

Footsteps approached, quiet enough that he wouldn’t have noticed them if he weren’t keeping a passive attention on his surroundings. Light steps, slightly longer in stride than her sister’s, the soft presence in the Force announcing the gentle heart of a caregiver.

That aura wasn’t entirely honest, but it was far more accurate for her than it was for Depa.

“Sar,” he greeted her.

She took that as the permission to approach as it was, gripping a data reader so tightly that he wasn’t going to like her news. She eyed the stone he sat on, the expression of concern so familiar that it tugged his heartstrings, but she wiped some lichen with her sleeve before sitting primly.

Sar kept the proper half-meter between them, though he’d told her she didn’t have to do that. She wasn’t a daughter to him, but her sister was, and that made her closer kin than most of the Order.

“Master Windu,” she answered, keeping the formality. “Did you check Amidala’s shatterpoint?”

Mace grimaced at the memory. “Tachi’s report came in?”

She gave a nod.

“Her shatterpoints look as if someone used a shoddy eraser on a piece of flimsy and then drew over the result,” he said bluntly. “Visions don’t cause that.”

“Not as far as we know,” she allowed. “It…fits with what she told me, though, if I assume she spoke literally rather than figuratively. It also explains…”

Sar frowned at the data reader.

He didn’t want to know, but he needed to ask: “Is Amidala even sane?”

“I don’t think so,” she said quietly. “She’s not Depa—I don’t think she’s going to kill anyone when she snaps. But with her mental talents, she could easily inflict a lot of damage unintentionally, like what happened to Reeft.”

Padawan Reeft couldn’t handle the bustle of Coruscant to this day, his mental shields still recovering from having the anchors shredded most of a decade ago. Sar blamed herself for that, because the mental pulse wouldn’t have been nearly so powerful if she hadn’t been aligned with Depa’s mental state at the time.

Alignment between Force-bonded persons produced a synergy that made whatever they were doing more efficient and effective, whether that was healing an injury or levitating an object. Biological kin had Force bonds, though the Coruscant Order promoted ignoring or suppressing those ones—a major reason Sar and Depa had decided to pretend they hadn’t realized they were sisters.

Muln had been there, too, but it turned out that he made the most of his not-that-powerful mental shields with some impressive engineering. His shields were designed to shunt attacks away, rather than to block them directly, so he’d gotten through the incident with a migraine and a nosebleed. His shielding method took a complicated, professional understanding of mechanics to be able to implement—Mace himself couldn’t replicate it—but there was no denying its effectiveness.

Muln had even kept his wits and stopped the unintentional mental attack by shooting Depa with the blaster that his master had given him. (Not that anyone was sure why the Pilot-Knight had given her thirteen-year-old padawan a blaster for his birthday. When asked, Clee just smiled and commented on how it suited him.)

Depa had shown a preference for Muln ever since, which Mace tried not to think about too much.

Sar was still sitting on the wall, though she’d admitted before that she found this garden ominous, not soothing.

“Naboo will be getting a Watchman,” he told her, though he was probably going to have to use his discretionary override to force the assignment through. “I’ll make sure the one assigned has good shielding.”

She nodded once in acceptance, but she didn’t leave. Mace left her to the silence, trusting she’d speak when she felt up to it.

Minutes passed.

Finally, she asked, “May I poison Master Tholme?”

Mace startled. “Physical violence? That’s usually Depa’s preference.”

“Yes,” Sar agreed. “It’s been a while since she’s buzzed in the back of my head like this. Glad it wasn’t worse, but if this is affecting me, what about—?”

She looked away, sucking in a breath through clenched teeth. Sar had far more practice in mitigating others’ emotions—especially her sister’s, through their family bond—than she did her own.

Being denied a padawan you’d been eyeing for years, because an administrative vote forbade it at the last minute, was good reason to be upset.

Mace sighed. “For what it’s worth, I think he would’ve made a fine knight, if he hadn’t decided to join the Corps.”

“But he didn’t, Master Windu.” Sar shook her head, still not looking at him. “I checked the transcripts for the session. Ferus said he would accept assignment to the Corps if given, but he felt he was called to be a Jedi.”

Mace stared at her. “You’re telling me he was shipped off early, without his consent,” which he himself had been misled about. “What does this have to do with Tholme? I thought he abstained from commenting on your arguments.”

The narrowed gaze Sar fixed on him matched Depa’s when annoyed. “He did. Which was interpreted as condemnation, because I was arguing the same way he would. Force, I argued the same way he did, when insisting he should be the one to teach Quin even though they were technically family!”

No wonder Sar was furious with Tholme. She’d had every reason to expect his support—and the boy being sent away early was exactly the sort of thing that sneaky bastard would do to block Sar’s right to appeal.

“The colony Ferus is supposed to help farm is on the Outer Rim, Master Windu. A twelve-year-old Force-sensitive child, with Jedi talents, was shipped into Hutt space.”

Mace’s gut writhed with the memory of what had happened when he’d foolishly taken his own twelve-year-old padawan on a mission out there. “He never arrived.” 

“He’s not the only one, either.” Sar offered him the data reader, which Mace seriously didn’t want to take. “And more are going missing after they start working, usually while in transit to another assignment.”

That pattern meant the kidnappers had insider information. She was saying that “Someone’s selling us.”

Depa was not an easy person to follow.

Obi-Wan pulled on lessons from Mandalore, taught by the woman he loved as much as he did Siri, and followed the empathic resonances of the bes’bev rather than the Jedi Master, herself, who was camouflaging herself in the Force as if she was a sister padawan to Quinlan.

Even so, he wasn’t sure he would’ve been able to find her if not for the squawking of a flute that she obviously didn’t know how to play. The sound drew his attention up, to the roof.

With the Force, he jumped, keeping the plate and its contents steady, and then he climbed to join her where she sat, at the pinnacle.

Obi-Wan wasn’t a musician, himself, but he was pretty sure flutes weren’t supposed to be held or blown into like that.

Depa didn’t look at him, just kept fiddling with the instrument, apparently unbothered by her own incompetence as she puzzled over how it was supposed to be used.

He made sure to shuffle a little as he approached, to give fair warning. She ignored him, and he sat beside her, with the plate between them. He let it clink as he set it down, balanced on the joint where the sides of the roof met.

Minutes passed. He made himself eat a pastry. It was very good, and something in the spices made him think of Quin.

Depa finally lowered the flute, clutching it in a fist, but still didn’t look at him. She was staring out towards the mountains, though he was pretty sure she wasn’t seeing them. “Why did you call me here, Obi-Wan?”

“For help with Anakin,” he said. “You’re better at programming than I am.”

That was true, though he hadn’t remembered it until he was midsentence.

What else did he know about her? She was skilled with Form III, the defensive form that could’ve saved Qui-Gon’s life. Tears stung his eyes, but he called on the Force to stop that. “I’d like to learn Soresu, myself, if you’re willing to teach me.”

She eyed him, doubtless picking up on the empathic resonance of what he’d suppressed. He made himself take a bite of another pastry, tacitly indicating he didn’t want to talk about that.

Depa was known for that, her sensitivity to others. It was a strange Force talent for a killer. But now that he thought about it, even her Council seat was unusual; Force Empaths were usually Consulars, not Guardians. Healers like Bant, or diplomats like Luminara.

The pastry really was delicious.

“They’re Quin’s recipe,” she said, nodding to what he was eating.

Quin did know Paddy, then? “You’ve been here before?”

“You’ve been a slave. Skywalker said.”

Obi-Wan didn’t understand what that had to do with her presence here before, unless… He stared at her, horror churning in his gut. “Your child? You had him here?”

Something sharpened in the Force. The predator, noticing a potential target. He drew himself in, both in the Force and physically, letting his poise say not a threat, even while he kept himself from cowering as prey. Satine had needed that sometimes, too, when those hunting them had left them particularly trapped.

“I don’t know if young was his usual preference, but he wanted Force-sensitive children with someone he could…overpower.”

Depa felt brittle, poised to shatter, for all that her voice was calm.

“Quin found me.” Her voice faded. She swallowed hard. “Mace was a councilor. Not Master of the Order yet. Not then. I was thirteen. Tholme had a friend here who watched us while he went on missions and let people think Quin and I were around. If I was with him, I couldn’t possibly be pregnant, now could I?”

Obi-Wan forced his tone to be light, as he focused on a safer part of what she’d said. “A friend, eh?”

She wrinkled her nose at him, the damage sinking beneath her usual calm exterior as if it had never been. “Not that kind of friend. Not with Master Tholme.”

He eyed her, uncertain if he should be relieved or leery that she shifted moods so quickly. He knew her as a placid lake, unaffected by anything around it, who enjoyed a good prank.

“Garen,” Depa said simply.

“I’m sorry?” Garen was Obi-Wan’s age. Was she saying the friend was a pedophile?

She snorted, reminding him that her talent for empathy included a knack for telepathy, as well, though that particular strength in the Force was rare enough that she should’ve been outright discouraged from ending up a Guardian. “You are aware that he’s Master Micah’s son?”

He blinked. Master Micah had been the Combat Master, before his death. Garen was…not gifted that way. “No. No, I was not.”

“No?” She plucked a pastry from the plate, nibbled at it. “His mother hosted us here.”

He stared at her. “Is that why you brought his ship here?” Without Garen’s permission, he was starting to suspect.

She frowned a moment before her expression shifted into a bright-eyed smile that made the hairs rise on the back of his neck. “Great idea!”

“What?! No, that wasn’t a—”

Too late. She’d already leapt off the roof and…started swimming across the lake?

Sabé’s warnings about water creatures entered his mind. Maybe Depa already knew about them, since she’d been here before, but…Jedi Master or not, high councilor or not, he didn’t dare assume she was in any condition to take care of herself.

He ran after her.

After Master Obi-Wan left the room, Anakin started tightening, a sense of danger building in his stomach. The conversation slowed and stuttered until it faltered to a stop, and Master Quinlan let it.

The tension lay thick on the air.

“I don’t trust you,” Anakin blurted—something he’d said before, but he had to say something, just to be able to breathe.

Master Quinlan eyed him with hardly a pause in his lunch, plucking the plate from the table and scooting away.

Anakin flushed at the implied assumption. “I— That didn’t happen to me.”

“I’m sure not everyone in the slave quarter was as fortunate.” Master Quinlan finished his latest pastry—just how many meals had he missed?—and stuck the plate on the table, without drawing closer. “Qui-Gon— No, that’s the wrong angle. You needled Depa, pulled her attention off me. Why?”

He obviously understood, so why was he asking?  Anakin hesitated but admitted, “She was hurting you to help herself feel better.”

“So? You don’t like me.”

“It’s still wrong.”

“Precisely,” Master Quinlan said. “Jedi do what’s right, regardless how we feel. Now. How do you know what’s right?”

“Mom says—” The words lodged in his throat.

After long moment, Master Quinlan said, “Sorry. Let’s leave that alone for now, then.”

The Kiffar’s hand twitched towards the platter of pastries, then clenched into a fist and lowered to his side. Anakin watched that warily. He wasn’t getting anger from him, but…

“Skywalker,” Master Quinlan said gently, holding himself still, “have you figured out why I make you uneasy yet?”

“You feel like the sentients that take advantage of Watto when the gambling’s been bad.” He stiffened. Why did he say that?

“Because I am that sort,” the Jedi replied, still gentle. “My job, in the Order, means I have to fit in with self-absorbed assholes. Most Jedi think I’m a self-absorbed asshole.”

“Are you?” Anakin bit his lip. It wasn’t as if he could trust Master Quinlan’s answer anyway.

“If it looks and acts like a Tusken, does it matter what species is under the robes?”

The Tatooine idiom snagged Anakin’s attention, but not enough that he didn’t notice… The Kiffar held himself as self-assured and confident as ever, but bodies lied so easily.

“I’m free,” Anakin said slowly, his gut churning as he realized, “but you’re not.”

Master Quinlan’s stillness gained a different quality, and his aura flexed in the Force.

The sense of a trapped sentient was too obvious, now that Anakin realized what he was feeling. “I don’t understand. You’re a slave?”

“I’m not.” The Kiffar caught his look. “Seriously, I’m not. I think I know what you’re noticing, but I’m not even allowed to talk about that with my padawan, Skywalker.”

“May I, then?” asked an older, female voice from behind them.

Getting startled by someone he hadn’t sensed meant Quinlan was on his feet, weapon in hand, before he turned.

Anakin jumped, too, but the woman herself was smiling patiently without flinching, for all that she wore a plain brown dress—definitely not handmaiden quality—and had her hair tied back, with a basket of laundry on her hip. The cut and fabric looked even plainer and rougher than Paddy’s preferences.

“Oh, hi,” Anakin said. “Uh, Master Quinlan, sir. This is Ryoo. She’s helping us today instead of one of Padmé’s handmaidens.”

Ryoo? He’d heard that name before. Jobal Naberrie’s mother, so—“Lady Thule?”

“Just Ryoo, please. I’m Housed, not of a House. My family are retainers for the Naberries, usually tending the shaak herds. I volunteered to help Paddy around here, so the girls can have their vacation.”

Quinlan started edging around the table towards the kid, for a better position to protect him. “That doesn’t explain how you think you know what I’m not telling Skywalker.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Ryoo said. “I know because Tahl told me.”

Tahl was just popping up everywhere, lately. Impressive, for a Jedi who’d been dead for the better part of a decade.

“You know Master Tahl?” Anakin asked. “I met her last night. Er. Sort of.”

“Oh?”  Ryoo moved carefully to put the basket down on the far side of the table. “She’s a ghost?”

This woman’s daughter had displayed Force sensitivity in front of him, but she hadn’t yet. Intentional, coincidental, or telling?

He made himself relax and oh-so-casually grab another pastry. “How’d you know Master Tahl?”

“You’ll have to ask your stepfather about that.”

Tholme had essentially adopted him, to keep the clan’s new sheyf from being able to reclaim him through the courts. But that wasn’t something someone could know by public record or by Order practice, only by understanding Kiffar clans and some esoteric details about clan Vos specifically.

“Good guess,” he said, both a compliment and a warning.

Ryoo froze in the middle of reaching for a pastry of her own and slowly withdrew her hand. “I apologize. Winama was the one who enjoyed the game. I was obligated to play for a time, and I have much respect for the sentients who live it, but I have never missed it.”

Yet records said Winama Naberrie was the one who’d known Jedi. Not this woman. Why?

“Master Quinlan?” Anakin asked uneasily.

“Nothing to worry about,” he lied lightly, then made an idle, unwarranted leap of logic to fish a reaction out of her: “Just one of my master’s old girlfriends, dancing around the admission.”

Ryoo gave him a flat look. “Nonsense. I’m the whore he slept with to test if he could enjoy Humans at all.”

She winced and cast Anakin an apologetic glance, consistent with that admission having been an accident, but the content indicated she probably did actually know Tholme. Quinlan would have to ask. And check the database for data on her, to see if his clearance codes found more than his padawan’s had, while he was at it.

“Retainers are slaves?” Anakin asked uneasily.

“No!” she snapped—almost before the kid finished speaking, so possible talent for telepathy, there. “No, we are servants, and we can leave whenever we choose. My occupation when I met Tholme was such a choice. My family is why Winama knew I could be helpful when she was rescuing him. She paid my debts, we ran a bar on Coruscant for a few years to ensure my former clients conveniently forgot about me, and we came back home and raised our children.”

Winama Naberrie had been credited with rescuing Jedi Padawans from Zygerria. Ryoo Thule had admitted that her family tended shaak herds, suggesting animal empathy—which would be quite useful, on such a mission, and could include a mild passive, subconscious telepathy.

Ryoo also said she’d slept with his master, with a justification that actually fit Tholme.

Neither of Padmé’s parents had thought anything of using the Force around him.

And Master Tahl had stayed in touch, through those two growing up, marrying, and deciding to raise a Jedi-strong child beside a normal one.

“Your illegitimate children,” Quinlan said aloud. “Sired on Coruscant.”

Ryoo froze. “Oh,” she murmured. “You’re good. Your stepfather must love that.”

Again with the reference to she wasn’t supposed to know—an admission that she probably did know what he wasn’t allowed to share, himself. “That’s not up for discussion.”

“Very well.” She turned her smile on Anakin.  “I apologize for upsetting you.”

“I’m not upset.” Anakin sounded a little confused. Understandable; a slave wouldn’t have perceived anything inappropriate about what she said.

A memory over a decade old struck him, of the first time he’d stayed here: Winnie, chatting about lightsabers in terms of Master Micah’s preferences.

Force, this ‘peaceful’ mission was proving to be an exhausting mess. “That explains the blaster talents.”

“I’m sorry?” Ryoo asked.

“Judging from the security footage I saw, your granddaughter is better with her blaster than any of her guards.” Every fripping shot she’d made had resulted in one downed droid. The most consistent follow-up had been the oldest handmaiden, a retired half-Corellian intelligence operative, whose skills surpassed those of even Amidala’s chief of security.

Ryoo winced, tacitly confirming his guess on that one, too. “Fortunately, Ruwee didn’t get his father’s temperament with his talent, or he’d be very unhappy now.” She hesitated. “That’s not to say either of them are unable to defend themselves. They’re just…”

He considered her, why she would be telling him all this now. “You never told the fathers.”

The smile she answered with was pained.

So that was what had bothered Tholme about Amidala. He would’ve noticed the Force niggling at him about her, but he wouldn’t have understood why.

Which also explained why Miss Thule was saying something now. Both Amidala’s grandfathers had been Jedi, and apparently both grandmothers had been Force-users native to Naboo. No wonder the girl was so strong in the Force. But with that kind of lineage, why was Sola not?

Maybe she was, but lineage gave her dangerous rogue talents that the family quietly kept suppressed? That would explain some of the resentment, too, and set the stage for how angry she was over whatever had happened to Amidala six years ago.

Quinlan rubbed his eyes, not looking forward to having to be the one to tell his master about the daughter he’d never known he had, much less the granddaughters. “Why didn’t you tell him?”

Ryoo glanced at Anakin, sighed. “Your master walks in the shadows, Master Jedi.”

That was how Master Tholme described his work, yes, but something cold twisted in Quinlan’s stomach. He pulled out his data reader and ran a search he should’ve thought to try years ago. “He mind-fripped me.”

“Shunted, really,” she corrected quietly, though she obviously understood that wasn’t much better.

“Tholme—” The disbelief, the hurt, was too strong. Quinlan drew a breath and took the time to yank the emotions and slam them into the Force, with a silent apology to Skywalker. “You know who his master was? —Of course you do. Don’t tell me. Dear Force.”

He had wondered, sometimes, why his master only used the one name, and why a Healer would join the Shadows. Yet he had somehow never noticed that nobody ever spoke of Tholme’s master.

Not Tholme. Not his age mates. Not even the Jedi older than that.

And that sort of silence, combined with the lack of public record and mental adjustment to keep him from noticing the absence, ensued from abuse so bad that there was no possible angle to ‘spin’ it as helpful. Even Master Kuro wasn’t shunned, and at least a third of those who knew about her was convinced she was a closet Darksider.

“Master Tholme was hurt by his master?” Anakin asked.

“Looks that way,” Quinlan said. “Frip it. Is everybody an abusive shit or survivor of one?”

“Probabilities can certainly give that impression, can’t they?” Miss Thule commented with amusement, reminding him so much of Tholme that he suddenly had a sick feeling about why they’d gotten along so well. She’d admitted to breaking away from her family to be a whore, on purpose, and that…was something youth usually chose to do for a specific reason.

He stared at the platter of pastries, wanting to eat before he forgot again but pretty sure he’d throw up if he tried. “No wonder my master’s ideal frip is a tree.”

Chapter Text

After the literally bruising session was over, ’the Dark Woman’ took Eirtaé to a cheap motel that reinforced her suspicion that the Jedi had seriously shitty mental health. She fought the urge to sneeze from the reek of perfume and other things she wasn’t sure she wanted to identify, whether the source was drugs or sex or some unholy blend of both.

“What’s wrong with where we were?” she asked as the Jedi prepared to pay for a few hours, to rest, because maybe there was a reason she just didn’t know about.

Something lurched, deep in the Dark Woman’s aura. Eirtaé couldn’t tell what it was—it was too far in—just saw the ripples that resulted on the surface.

“We keep moving,” the Jedi said, tone final.

Eirtaé eyed her warily, for that wasn’t an answer—and there so obviously was a Very Bad story behind that decision. Remembering Vos’s efforts to keep his apprentice separate from his interactions with Eirtaé, she forced a smile. “Don’t want your padawan finding you?”

Something cold swirled in the Jedi like a whirlpool, and the seconds of silence were so obviously a heavy no. Something was very wrong, there.

When Eirtaé panicked, Vos helped distract her, helped her find a task to focus on. She hesitated, then gestured towards the last news stand they’d passed, on their way here. “We’ll be looking into the alleged bacta shortage, then?”

The Dark Woman frowned at her. “Alleged?”

How foolish did the Jedi think her? “The timing is convenient.”

The frown remained.

Eirtaé adjusted her jaw so she wouldn’t clench her teeth. “Naboo?” she asked pointedly. “They’re announcing a bacta shortage right when we need to buy it.”

…Which would be very much like now-Chancellor Palpatine to orchestrate, if he were genuinely the one behind the blockade and invasion. Maybe it was a punishment. Father would certainly retaliate like that, and she had the sense that the chancellor was the same sort, even though she couldn’t remember.

Which in itself was probably a warning, according to Vos.

She sighed.

When she glanced to the Jedi again, she found that the woman was still frowning.

“You’re Naboo?”

Oh dear ancestors or gods or Force or whoever in the galaxy was listening to her think, right now. “What did Jedi Tholme tell you about me, exactly?”

The Dark Woman hesitated, then said, “You’re a Force-sensitive contact of Quinlan’s who needs a crash course in how to keep yourself alive before he gets you killed.”

Seriously? They were assuming Vos was going to be the death of her?

And if they thought that little of him, what did that say about their willingness to let him teach Secura?

Eirtaé was going to shoot Tholme.

‘That braid you wear means something! I thought you respected that!’

Siri Tachi winced from the memory, oh so fresh, delivered almost as soon as she’d set foot in the motel room that had been their rendezvous point. She hated sitting still, hated meditating, but she forced herself to do it, to take the memory of her master’s sincere disappointment and hurt and anger—oh so strong, since Master Adi had never accounted for Siri’s mental talents with her shielding. Master Adi hadn’t known to.

The deckplate was grainy and cold under her ass.

‘I thought I knew you!’

Siri’s laugh came out choked, punctuated with tears, and it was something she seriously needed to get under control before she could become Zora and vanish into the shadows. Krayn hated Jedi, would kill her if he got even the slightest inkling that she had been one. She could not afford this.

She could compartmentalize. That was how she locked up her feelings for—for someone else she wasn’t going to think about.

Cross-legged wasn’t working.

She pulled up her knees and screamed into them. Her efforts weren’t working.

And by the Force, she needed them to work!

She needed help, needed support, but she couldn’t afford to get any. Calling another Jedi would be stupid, suicidal—she’d already swapped out the comm packs, made the initial physical changes to the ship to distance it from the one she’d received. (There would be more mods, later, but she had to earn the credits, first.)

Calling someone who presumably hated Jedi might work. Might even help, if Krayn found out ‘Zora’ had once been Siri. If the first thing she did after leaving the Order was contacting someone who supposedly wanted them all dead…

Siri pulled herself up, plopped back in the pilot’s seat, and stared at the comm. Did she dare call? It had been weird enough when the woman contacted her, desperate for advice but unwilling to jeopardize Obi-Wan’s place in the Order to get it.

“Oh frip it all,” she muttered. The woman had dared ask Siri for a favor that could’ve easily gotten her shot instead of helped. Siri could in the very least reciprocate that trust.

Her call went straight to the message box.

She drew a breath. “Hey, how’s Korkie doing? Look, I’m sorry to ask you this, but I need some help…”

With his mission to Malastaire passed on to someone who hadn’t had their corvette stolen, Jedi Knight Garen Muln had been reassigned to helping the maintenance crew, at the moment. Some tasks required awkward and dangerous maneuvering midair, conventionally done on wires, and it was always safer to have a telekinetic on-hand for that.

Critics might have called the Jedi Order baby-stealers who didn’t care about non-Sensitives, but the Order did its best to keep their non-Sensitive employees safe. Usually the Mechanics Corps handled this sort of task, but it wasn’t unheard-of for a mechanically-inclined Jedi to fill in when awaiting orders.

That made excellent cover for what Garen was actually doing.

His liquid cable, tethered to the ceiling, held him aloft so he could carefully examine and document the Agri Corps cargo hauler. Did he know why he was looking for score marks or other signs of violence? No. Depa’s abrupt theft of his corvette sure gave him a suspicion, though.

(Not that he actually knew for certain what had happened to her, either, but…how long she’d been gone from the Temple? The fact that Quinlan knew whatever it was? The way nobody was pushing her to take a padawan? Her council seat? Her extreme care to avoid being startled? There weren’t many options that fit all those details.)

While maneuvering to process another patch of paneling, he glimpsed Knight Sar Labooda standing awkwardly on a walkway below, holding her robes over an oil spill and leaning away from some dirty grease on the railing beside her. It was a passing detail, something that he noticed but took a few seconds to realize Knight Labooda was in the Temple hangar.

Mind healers rarely left the Temple, and Sar Labooda was fastidious to the point that Depa actually didn’t prank her about it.

(Depa at least tried to avoid being cruel—tried being the operative word, there. Most who knew about the Fountain Incident still shuddered over it—she’d stuck red dye, thickening agent, and wax heads of high councilors in the Room of Thousand Fountains. The initiate credited with finding it was Quinlan’s padawan now, which some claimed was ‘proof’ of their belief that Depa was naïve and Quinlan took advantage to get her to claim responsibility for some of his shit. It was as if nobody remembered that time in the creche when a padawan on caretaker duty pinched Sar—which had actually been before Garen’s time, but Luminara would sometimes share details when she was drunk enough.)

Garen eyed Sar. She was scanning with the Force, looking for someone…

He flared his aura a bit—a hello, for someone with her mental talents.

She immediately looked up towards him, expectantly.

He sighed at the interruption, carefully recorded where he was leaving off, then headed down. He minded where his boots hit upon landing, not wanting to splash. (Sar could be really prickly about her robes.)

She hesitated, uneasily, then passed him the flimsy in her hand.

Garen looked at the printout of his new orders, rereading them twice before looking at her.

Sar just met his gaze, placidly, as if she wasn’t about to take the biggest risk of her life.

He opened his mouth, glanced at the witnesses, then guided her over to the corvette she’d…requisitioned, per the flimsy. A travel pack was already just inside, so she’d prepared before approaching him.

She picked up that pack as he shut the airlock behind them.

He fanned himself with the flimsy. “There’s no approval signature on this.”

Sar didn’t so much as flinch.

“Are you sure you want me to take you to Naboo?” he pressed. “It’s going to fall on you. People will believe I didn’t notice the approval signature, and maybe I’ll have some extra paperwork for a while, but you’ll be the one who’s usurped Order resources for a mission of your own making.”

Annoyance tightened her eyes. “Do you lecture Depa, as well?”

”No. I already know Depa only gives a frip insofar as her actions have repercussions on Master Windu.”

Sar huffed—maybe amusement, maybe annoyance. He didn’t know her well enough to guess, and that wasn’t a mannerism Depa shared. “I thought you’d want the chance to pick up your corvette.”

Sooner would be better for that.

He came to a decision. “Reeft says his shields have stabilized. He’s hoping to be able to return to Coruscant in a few months.”

She recognized that as acceptance and headed for the cockpit.

He took in a breath, held it, and quickly typed a message to Master Windu, saying he was assuming the new assignment was a detour and he’d pick up his review of the cargo hauler when he got back.

He hoped he wouldn’t regret this, but he really wanted his corvette back before Depa did something stupid like prioritized it over her own safety.

The palace was quiet, most taking advantage of the mourning period to confirm the survivors among their friends and family. There were funerals and celebrations happening all over Theed and even Naboo.

There were still enough people tending the library for it to be open, though. Rabé hoped that wasn’t due to her visits, which hadn’t stopped after finding that damning detail about Eirtaé. (Speaking of Eirtaé, she’d obviously had a suspicion about who her biological father had been, so who? And where had she gone?)

The cafeteria was running, too, but that was visibly lower in staff and food preparation. Rabé took advantage of it, though, since the meals were free for royal staff.

She’d taken a hard look at her finances and adjusted her budget so she could conveniently save more of it, to utilize as her own education budget. She made sure to keep her shopping locations and amounts consistent, just in case they were being watched—she didn’t want to alert Captain Panaka she was acting behind his back—but she withdrew credit orders instead of buying that nutty mocha she loved so dearly, or the olives…

Her stomach growled, the memory of the treats feeling so much more appetizing than the slightly overdone stuffed tomatoes that were her lunch. She sighed.

As she stepped out to of the serving area find a seat, laughter caught her ear. She looked up and out to glimpse Sabé by the cloister tables, grinning at something, speaking to nobody… Ah, but that comm by her would explain the chatter.

Sabé was relaxed in a way Rabé had rarely seen before, and she’d certainly never seen that grin stay on the younger girl’s face.

What secret did Captain Panaka have over her?

Rabé hesitated but figured she might as well approach.

“Fa, no!” Sabé said to her comm. “Which of us have actually been to Coruscant, again?”

Rabé wasn’t quite close enough to comprehend the reply, but it sounded like an invective against purses.

“Of course, Fa. Every group has its idiots and jerks who take advantage. The Jedi have their idiots and jerks—that one who died for our queen being a case in point, considering Her Highness outright warned him…”

While speaking Sabé gestured her acceptance of Rabé’s nonverbal request to sit.

Sabé had taken very easily to the handmaidens’ lessons in nonverbal communication.

Rabé frowned. “You weren’t a gymnast, were you?”

Sabé froze, stiff, then took a bracing breath. “Fa? I’ll call you back later. Stay sober!” She shut down the comm, looked to Rabé. “No, I wasn’t. Yané, you might want to be part of this conversation.”

Rabé startled.

Fabric rustled from the direction of the nearby cloister tables, and Yané edged herself out. Rabé hadn’t even glimpsed her back there. How had Sabé known it?

As for Yané’s hunching, the leeriess… Rabé recognized those from her cousins. Asking Sabé to share a secret warranted sharing one of her own, like that she noticed and understood what she was seeing, though she was only a few years older than Sabé.

“Hiding from your father?” she asked sympathetically.

Yané froze.

“Her father?” Sabé’s confusion was palpable. “Her mother’s the one she hardly dares breathe around.”

Yané, pale-faced and wide-eyed, trembled.

“Gods!” Sabé muttered, jumping to her feet and reaching to be poised to catch the younger girl if she fell. “I’m sorry. I should’ve— Oh, well, you’re not the only one with secrets, okay? I’m a water mime.”

What?

Sabé swallowed hard. “I mean, I was a water mime, and talking with Anakin made me realize that slavery being illegal here doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Some people break laws. That’ll apply to the anti-slavery ones, too. And I’m gonna use my status as an Unhoused primary handmaiden to look for slaves and do something about it.”

Unhoused?

That explained so much.

Rabé still stared at Sabé, though, as she realized something. “You’re the only one of us on the decoy protocol.”

“Yes, I’m trying to get my father in on this so he can continue it even if an assassin gets me.”

“No,” Rabé said, blood rushing in her ears. “You’re the only decoy.”

“For now,” Sabé said matter-of-factly. “The plan is to expand it as suitable volunteers are found.”

Was she ignoring or missing the oh so obvious?

A sharp breath came from Yané, as if she’d just caught on.

Rabé sat heavily, letting her tray hit the table by Sabé’s tray. Yané hesitated, then followed her lead. Yané tended to follow leads.

Sabé was frowning in confusion, but she also returned to her meal.

Taking a bite of overdone stuffed tomato bought Rabé a few seconds, especially with how the tea splashed on it actually helped the texture. She waved her fork in Yané’s general direction. “You’re not of a House, right?”

The girl gulped and shook her head.

Rabé indicated her tomato, which was no worse off than their own lunches. (Sabé apparently preferred eggplant.) “Is anyone of a House on-site, right now?”

“No,” Sabé said slowly, as if testing for what she was missing. “That would be why they’re serving secondrate food.”

The slight nod from Yané was so obviously agreement.

Rabé stared at them both. “Do you have any idea how illegal that is?”

“…Some people break laws,” Sabé repeated, pointedly.

“Laws only matter insofar as they’re enforced,” Yané said quietly—too quietly, barely audible and Rabé was sitting right there. Did Yané share her opinion more often than any of them noticed, because they couldn’t hear her? “That’s why King Veruna got away with everything.”

“And Panaka got his job under him,” Rabé said aloud—not loudly, but louder than was probably wise, considering… “Frip an uberfish through the planet core.”

Yané’s face went blank, fear flickering in her eyes.

Sabé blinked. “That would take a unique diving apparatus.”

With the picture getting drawn in the sand about their jobs, Rabé wasn’t about to throw the others into the waves. “One of the Jedi visitors asked me to send a copy of our curriculum, for him to suggest further reading for me. I’m thinking of just asking him for advice altogether, for all of us. Ditch Panaka; train ourselves.”

“Won’t he notice that when he tests us, though?” Yané asked, voice weak and wobbling. “That’s how Mom keeps sabotaging my graduation. She keeps setting up these tests of what I’m learning, and I keep falling into them and then she…she…”

The younger girl’s breathing went fast and shallow.

Sabé frowned. “You’re not an adult yet? I had to get my majority to get hired.”

“Worker’s dispensations are possible,” Rabé explaind, “but only if you’ve completed sufficient core coursework to be theoretically able to pass the majority exam.”

The younger girl’s dark eyes kept darting back and forth between them, watching for…what?

Watching for disbelief or doubt, Rabé realized. Watching that they were still safe to keep conversing with. She was struggling to properly breathe and still wary of danger.

How dare the woman do this to her own daughter.

Rabé’s gaze met Sabé’s, and her own anger was mirrored there.

Sabé had a bag by her feet, and she rummaged a bit before pulling out some flimsy and a stylus. “What’s your ID, and what are your classes like? There’s gotta be some way to get the test.”

“There’ll be a fee for the exam,” Rabé said. Sabé’s would’ve been covered as part of her hiring package. “Her mom’s getting her paycheck.”

Sabé paused. “Okay, so we cover her fee. Now how do we keep her away from her mother?”

Yané mewled a little sound of disbelief that Rabé never wanted to hear again. Sabé flinched.

Rabé considered how Eirtaé had manipulated Panaka, how Saché had insinuated that Eirtaé might have Jedi powers like the queen…and how addled Her Highness was upon coming out of her visions.

She lifted her chin, looking the other two dead in the eyes. “It’s a good thing we all have special assignments from the queen herself, isn’t it? Whether or not she remembers giving them to us?”

Sabé stared at Rabé in clear surprise.

Yané, though, frowned shrewdly, even as her hands shook. “Does she remember firing Panaka?”

Considering the precedents he’d been setting with his abuse of Sabé and the rest of them, that was a good point. “I like how you think.”

“Now, that’s too far,” Sabé protested.

“Too fast,” Rabé countered, “but we might need to risk it. How do you think he’s going to react once he understands the queen has Jedi powers?”

Yané clasped her hands together, tightly. “You’re thinking reputation sabotage.”

“To reduce how many take him seriously once he loses his temper with her,” Rabé agreed.

Sabé mouthed oh.

Yané slowly smiled and carefully reached for her fork, struggling to keep her fingers and breathing steady at the same time. “If you help me get my majority, I can be leverage for both.”

Both getting him fired and reputation sabotage?

“Your mother?” Sabé asked. “You think she’d throw that much of a fit over you getting your majority under his nose?”

“And immediately volunteering for the decoy protocol,” Yané added, still smiling. “Yes.”

Something about that smile was making Rabé uneasy, not reassured.

Even Sabé was frowning at the younger girl. “The decoy protocol is a lot of work, and it’s far more dangerous than the usual job.”

“I understand.”

Her hands. Yané’s hands were lingering by her wrists.

Yané always covered her wrists.

Rabé put down her fork, appetite gone. “You don’t have to follow through, even if you volunteer. You can opt out.”

“I won’t.”

Sabé still looked confused.

Rabé belatedly remembered how Saché—also originally employed under Veruna—tended to stick near Yané, shielding her to some degree. Maybe that older, more experienced handmaiden was already working at something.

But even if that was the case, the evidence of how ineffectual Saché’s efforts had been…

Rabé forced her attention from Yané’s arms, letting the girl keep some privacy. “Does anyone know where Eirtaé went?”

Rip the tide out the door, Jedi Padawan Aayla Secura messaged her master once the timer went off, the silliness sufficing as a check-in and setting precedent that made things all the less suspicious when she had to message code words or phrases.

He actually replied, this time: Don’t joke about that.

She rolled her eyes. As if anybody would catch the nod to Sith poisons!

Aayla brushed back her lekku and ran a search on another news archive, looking for keywords that might fit manifestations of Force sensitivity. When she mentioned the Force to various Gungans here in Otah-whatever, everybody knew what it was and called it ‘maxi big’—which indicated some awareness of it, but there had never been a Gungan Jedi.

She tried asking directly if anybody used the Force, and most gave her weird looks. A few ignored her question outright.

One male, a librarian, had stumbled over himself, muttering something about needing his hsuberry wine. She hadn’t seen him since, and nobody knew who she was talking about when she asked for his name.

Altogether, Gungans obviously had Force-sensitive members and didn’t talk about it with outsiders. At all.

Jar Jar Binks, then, could quite possibly be banished in part because he lacked the discretion to properly handle his own Force sensitivity—if he had it. Aayla suspected he did.

He certainly had been given an incredible number of opportunities to be a productive member of society before his banishment, with his unusually destructive clumsiness sabotaging each one.

Which brought the question of what the big deal was about the hsuberry the Gungans loved so much but were leery of feeding her, citing concerns about physiological compatibility…even though the Naboo consumed hsuberry just fine. Maybe they used a different processing method?

She highlighted her note to self to get her hands on some Gungan hsuberry, to test against—

A Force presence caught her attention. “Grandmaster?”

He strode through the library entrance and over to her without pausing. “Pack up.”

Aayla blinked at him. “But I’m in the middle of—”

“You’re going back to Coruscant.”

But she wasn’t done. “Master Quinlan assigned me this.”

“I’ll pick him in up in a bit.”

New orders, then, sending she and her master in different directions. Probably Sith-related, since that was the category where she had the lowest clearance. She slumped. “Okay, let me just—”

“Now.”

She knew better than to argue with that tone. She scrambled to gather her notes and reader and water bottle. The data rods could be cleaned up by the librarians—at least, she thought they could.

Aayla hesitated, mentally reviewing what she had out. Nothing damning.

“Grandpadawan.”

“I’m coming,” she said, even as fear tickled her chest. For him to be shipping her off to Coruscant, so abruptly, before he even notified Master Quinlan of his new orders…

What had happened?

And how long would it be before she saw her master again?

Chapter Text

“I told you I’d visit Boba tomorrow,” Jango said, without looking up from the caff he was nursing as he tried to get up the gumption to munch on the hunk of rowena he’d served himself. The sugar would help him think, help avoid a spiral down in mood…

Taun We bent her neck forward with the sharp edge that conveyed annoyance, but she didn’t set down the tray she’d brought, heaped with bandages, bacta packets, ration pouches. “You are hurt. You haven’t eaten. You—”

“Have a care, Taun We,” he said quietly, letting concern harshen the sound. If their masters were listening, they would hear it as a threat, not a warning. “You don’t understand what you’re dealing with.”

That yank back was indignation—and how long had he been here, that he could read the bobs of her head so easily? Taun We helped, willingly explained mannerisms when asked—after all, she had her job because she enjoyed communicating with non-Kaminoans—but still. Kaminoans were biologically unrelated to other sentients around the galaxy. He hadn’t been here that long. Even with how adept he had to be at reading people…

Memory flashed of the Jedi he’d fought on Tatooine, who had used even blasters older than he was as easily as she’d used her lightsaber, despite her years younger. (A decade, maybe? Maybe not that much, but—)

If Tachi had been honest about the divisions in Jedi training, that meant Billaba had to be a Guardian—while the dossier from Dooku would’ve led him to think her a Consular.

Tachi had also described Billaba as a berserker. The woman he’d fought had been controlled, not lost in the killing, so she’d been restrained, even while they kicked each other around the street. If he faced her beserk, he’d have to let his own demon out, just to survive.

Dooku was well-connected and well-informed, where he knew a lot of private and otherwise classified things from Jedi records. His ignorance of Billaba’s skills declared just how secret they were, even though she seemed to be precisely what Dooku had intended for his own apprentice to be.

Assassins commonly preferred keeping secret their propensity for combat, but would the Jedi really make one? They were hypocrites, sure, but it came from a belief of innate goodness or something. Making an assassin would sabotage that. It would definitely be bad PR.

Maybe the killers were a super-secret branch that even other Jedi didn’t necessarily know about? And the whispers that the Order quietly condoned murder were true?

“Jango?”

He drew a sharp breath. “Go away!” he snapped, glaring at her in a wordless demand to understand not now. They needed to get Taun We her own line of contact with Billaba, to get Billaba set up with enough information that she could potentially salvage things if it all went down a black hole, but before that…

He needed to rest, he needed to think, and he needed to figure out what precisely his subconscious was trying to tell him about Billaba before he possibly endangered Taun We further in his efforts to make sure she didn’t suffer for his mistakes that had gotten him enslaved again.

Obi-Wan caught up to Depa somewhere in the middle of the lake, and only because she’d stopped. She tread water easily, sedately, head canted as if listening to something below.

“Mas— Depa?” he asked.

“We’re too high up for überfish,” she said wistfully.

The memory of Jar-Jar freaking out in his ear due to a fish bigger than some starships almost made him wince. “Good.”

She pouted, and memory flashed of her as a teenager, playfully mocking Quinlan in one of the conversations that nobody could follow what in the Force they were talking about. Obi-Wan couldn’t remember any betting pools featuring the two of them together—or even any rumors of them having a fling—but now that he thought about it, the pair of them had a closeness that was downright unusual, considering they weren’t known to hang out together.

And Quinlan had expected Depa’s reaction. How?

Maybe they knew each other so well from their lineages? Their masters were good friends, so they could’ve had a fair bit of interaction there…

“What was it like?”

He blinked, attention drawn back to the woman beside him. “I’m sorry?”

“Fathering a child, instead of…” She shuddered, momentarily dipping in the water before she recovered.

“I’ve never fathered a child,” he countered, taking advantage of her odd phrasing.

Depa eyed him, doubtless catching his defense. “…Right.”

He had the sense she’d almost said something else.

“Your lineage isn’t celibate, though, right? I know Masters Qui-Gon and Tahl were…” Planning to have a relationship, but she died before they could.

Obi-Wan carefully considered Depa for several seconds, but his impression was of sadness and youth, no censure or latent interest or some such thing. Answering seriously might be best, then.

And maybe part of him still gnawed on an all-too-recent comm call. ‘If you still love me at all’… “They would’ve left the Order first—or so Qui-Gon told me later, when all but ordering me to let go of Siri.”

Depa didn’t dip, this time, but only because she held herself steady in the Force as she stared at him. “You and Siri?!”

She doubtless remembered their interactions from junior padawanhood, when the pair of them had not gotten along, so she thought he’d been with someone else. Surely he hadn’t been that obvious? Heat filled his face.

Depa flinched, averted her gaze, and still kept herself steady with the Force instead of treading water. “She’s gonna break my leg,” she muttered, then asked frankly, “If you had a child, would you want to know?”

Was that truly relevant to the issue, here? “If you don’t want to know about yours, or if you do, or if you didn’t once but do now… that’s all your prerogative, Master Billaba. You’re not obligated to make the choice I would, in your position. The only question that matters is if you want to know.”

“I’m aware,” she snapped, voice clipped and sharp, then snipped off some bundle of emotion so tightly wound and packaged that he couldn’t read it before the Force took it away.

“Never mind that,” she said. “I had a…” Her dark eyes seared him before averting, pink tinging her cheeks. “For me, it was a nightmare. But it didn’t…”

Obi-Wan had a moment of fearing she was obliquely trying to ask him to seduce her before realizing that she’d thought he was attracted to her at all, she wouldn’t have been able to have this conversation with him.

She huffed. “Neither of us has our equilibrium, right now.”

And with her Force talents, she was doubtless affected by how off-kilter he’d felt since Qui-Gon’s death. “I’m sorry.”

She rebuked his apology with a sour look—and for good reason. She was a Jedi Master, trained and capable of self-control even in horrific circumstances. Today had just been a unique combination of unexpected reminders of a past trauma she apparently hadn’t dealt with, exacerbated by an unsettling dream and whatever happened yesterday.

“Quinlan would know more of what can be done or said to help you,” Obi-Wan said. “He’s a good man, kind and considerate and—”

She laughed hard, but there was something brittle and bitter about it. Even so, the way she looked at Obi-Wan after held more amusement than anything else. “I’m the wrong type of damaged, for his tastes.”

Her teeth bared with a grin, eyes glinting with a glee that made the hair stand on end on the back of his neck. “He’d do you, though.”

Obi-Wan blinked. “He likes men?”

“He likes…” She tilted her head, considering. “That isn’t relevant in what he likes. He prefers a certain…personality.” She glanced at his hair. “And gingers. But he’s not picky about the biology.”

Hearing all this about Quinlan secondhand was not comfortable, but she was so obviously trying to tell him something. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand the problem. If you’re so thoroughly not his type, why can’t you discuss your dream with him?”

She sighed and, just before continuing to swim away from Varykino, said quietly, “Because I think he might be mine.”

Even most Jedi who knew both Depa Billaba and Sar Labooda didn’t realize they were related. Garen had always suspected that ignorance was caused by inattention and willful blindness more than any significant dissimilarity, and travel with Sar just reinforced that suspicion.

Sar shared Depa’s tendency to stillness, her ability to speak with her silences, and even her quiet curiosity about things outside her field of expertise, treating them as puzzles to unravel.

Garen had noticed her leaning to view the navicomp readout and pulled up the hyperspace lane maps for her. She’d set to reading them, apparently having forgotten much of her navigation classes—assuming she’d had them at all. Temple-bound Jedi sometimes opted out, but wasn’t that limited to ones who literally couldn’t go on field missions?

“Haven’t you been to Ilum?” he asked aloud.

“No,” she answered without looking away from the map or pausing in her tapping to get a better look at the Chommel sector.

“How’d you build your lightsaber, then?”

“I didn’t.”

He almost thought she’d leave it there, but she gave a little annoyed sigh and closed out the map. “I blew up the workroom even before I had a crystal to work with.”

Garen’s mind skittered over her admission, trying to figure out— “How did you do that?”

Sar shrugged. “I kill kybers, too.”

He stared at her, sure she was joking, but…where were the tells? “You’re a mind healer.”

“Yes. That’s the problem. I approach kybers as if they’re people.”

He couldn’t stop staring.

“You are aware how Depa was Found?”

“Slavers. Master Windu found and killed them after they killed your parents.”

“We experienced our parents’ murders, the slavers’ dehumanization. I had the benefits of distance, creche support, and the shielding of a toddler instead of an infant. She didn’t. As far as she’s concerned, personhood is…not presupposed, for herself or anyone else. That’s why she self-isolates when particularly stressed—she perceives people as things.”

Oh Force. That made all sorts of sense. “So that year she was missing—”

The fire that flashed through Sar’s eyes shut him up.

But yeah, that did explain why Depa seemed most comfortable with people who could possibly kill her. It even explained Sar’s comments regarding her lightsaber—Depa built her lightsaber, maybe even got the crystals from Ilum. Puzzles like that did seem to help her keep steady despite whatever was pulsing in her head.

He shivered. “And you hear that all the time.”

Normalizing her to an amount of mental push and pushback that meant she skipped the ‘gentle’ stage used to bind with a kyber.

“Not all the time. We are individuals. But…you may want to have your blaster ready when we land.”

So Depa was having another episode. Great.

A welling unpleasant feeling pulled Padmé’s attention from the light doze she didn’t remember entering.

“Look who’s gracing us with her presence.” Sola’s tone was so sour it was almost bitter.

Padmé blinked a few times, surprised to find they were on a family craft, ports closed. Now that she was awake, she had a vague memory of being guided about her business and into the soft cushions… Mom and Dad had discussed something about a ‘him’, and Mom had gone on some sort of errand that had been weirdly swift…

“You gonna eat that?”

“What?” Padmé glanced to where Sola’s attention had flickered. A bowl of shurra fruit, sliced up for eating, was in her lap. “Oh! You want some?”

Sola just stared at her from the seat opposite Padmé, contempt curling her lips.

The fruit was delicious, Padmé’s favorite, but this dynamic between them was painful, and all the more so because it was entirely foreign. They had never been this antagonistic, Before, not even at their worst disagreements.

Padmé offered her sister the entire bowl. “Where are we going, anyway?”

Sola’s eyes narrowed. “Varykino.”

Pleasure and anxiety both spiked in Padmé. The opportunity to see Anakin and Obi-Wan was lovely, but still so different from Before. But then, so was this. “Oh, I love the water!”

From her sister’s lack of reaction, the attempt to grab some levity failed spectacularly.

Sola let the silence sit for a few heartbeats before demanding, “What are you?”

Padmé stared at her in confusion. “I— What?”

The door to the helm area opened. “Sola, go sit with your father.” Mom entered, and Padmé had the uncomfortable realization that she couldn’t remember any time truly alone with her sister, not since Before.

“Don’t you mean yours?” Sola snapped.

Mom’s lips pursed. “Him, too.”

Mother and daughter locked gazes, respectively placid and furious. Tension welled in the room, agitating the Force.

“Jobal?” called a male voice that sounded familiar, though Padmé couldn’t place it.

“I have it,” Mom answered.

The turbulence kept growing, though, for a few seconds—then abruptly imploded. Sola growled and stormed out.

Mom settled onto the seat. “We’ll have to get some tea for that headache of yours.”

That headache of Padmé’s? Mom could tell? Since when?

She sighed. “Your Force sensitivity came from somewhere, Padmé.”

“I thought that was Nana.” Nana, Dad’s mother, had been Force-sensitive. “Grandma, too?” Grandma Thule never seemed Force-sensitive.

“We never told you before, I take it.”

That was a yes, then, on both her grandmothers. Padmé shivered. “Please don’t ask me about that.”

“Oh, if your life turned out anything like Winama’s before she took a spin, your father and I have more of an idea than you think. My father, however, does not. Winama says he was an idiot with what she did tell him, but I’m not sure what else she expected from a Jedi Sentinel. Perpetual self-sabotaging stupidity is a lot of their job, and my father’s probably among the worst on that. Ruwee’s father was more stupidly self-sabotaging, from what I understand, though I don’t believe I ever met him.”

“When would you have met him?” came from the entrance, where Jedi Master Tholme leaned in the doorway. “Also, we’ve arrived.”

Mom smiled politely. “I have been to Coruscant.”

“Pit racing,” Dad said from behind the Jedi. “We’d visit my brother there, sometimes, when we were younger, but sometimes we’d meet other Jedi in the raids.”

Tholme stared blankly at Dad. “Clee took Garen pit racing to see you?”

Mom’s expression soured. “So it was okay when you thought his master was taking him to take part in the extremely hazardous races but not if she was taking him to a family visit?”

Dad gave Mom a disapproving look. “Please stop fiddling with Sola’s perception.”

“She doesn’t need to hear this.”

“It’s not helping,” Dad said gently.

Mom just met his look.

Tholme was watching their interaction with keen curiosity, and—

“Master? Hi, Sola, your grandmother’s past the kitchen. Master, is there some kind of bounty for a sea monster or something? Depa and Obi-Wan scrammed out, and I don’t think I’m supposed to be left as Skywalker’s handler but don’t feel comfortable leaving him with your ex, considering the long reach of trees and all.”

Tholme went a little red in the face as Vos peered over Dad’s shoulder. What was he doing here?                                                                                                         

Mom laughed, as if the Kiffar had something particularly witty. Maybe she understood the tree reference?

Vos gave Mom a sharp look that quickly turned pained as he muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “Dear Force.”

“We are actually civilians,” Dad stated. “Our conjecture is personal, not professional.”

Mom hummed in agreement.

“That’s not exactly better,” Vos said. “C’mon, Your Highness. Let’s get you inside.”

Padmé frowned. “Why would you need to help me—” Her attempt to stand resulted in tingling legs that refused to hold her. She landed hard, one of Dad’s elbows hitting her in the chest. “Ow!”

“Yeah, mind-healing trances are rough on the coordination. C’mon.”

“Jobal did it herself,” Tholme said, sounding both proud and uneasy as Vos—who, come to think of it, was actually still a rather young man—helped her out of the shuttle and into the almost-too-bright sunlight.

“That’s nice. Oh, you mean she takes after you in that, too? Aw, kriff. As if one manipulative bastard who could frip up your nervous system and memories wasn’t enough to deal with.”

Mom sniffed as they all followed Vos and Padmé onto the deck. “I’m not Winama.”

That…was not denying that she could do that. Padmé stared at her mother, who she’d always known as a worrier who liked to feed people.

Sadness entered Mom’s eyes as she met Padmé’s wide ones. “There are reasons we never told you, Padmé. But with your condition… Well. Sometimes it’s better to turn on the lights, revealing what’s in shadow, before someone else does.”

“You can’t tell Palpatine!” Padmé blurted.

Vos hesitated, nearly tripping her, before continuing, pulling a chair out from the dining room table and moving a pastry from the platter to a little plate in front of her.

“The chancellor?” Tholme asked, something in his aura coming alert and attentive. “You think he’s in league with the Sith?”

The Kiffar laughed, loud and long (and false false false, something in her whispered, though it sounded and felt sincere). “Wow, Master. It’s like you forgot this is the queen and he could press for her to resign out of term or something.”

And then a bundle of ten-year-old was in her arms, wrapping her in a hug. “Padmé! You’re okay!”

That was too close. As Quinlan watched Skywalker crawl over the Naberrie girl, checking her for injuries and distracting the others—well, distracting Tholme, because Sola had stormed off to vent to her grandmother, and Amidala’s parents obviously knew a lot more than they had been letting on, to the point that he distrusted their apparent inattention.

He rubbed his face. This wasn’t really the time to ask, but he needed to: “So when Aayla got into those millies…”

“Oh, we had nothing to do with that,” Jobal said briskly, confirming his suspicion about their attentiveness. “We just helped prevent harm from coming from it.”

He eyed her and decided he might as well opt for believing her unless given reason to doubt.

Tholme was watching the scene with blatant curiosity and pleasure. His old master always liked seeing happy, healthy families, even while keeping watch for hints that they were façades hiding something darker.

That made Quinlan pause, but he nonetheless pressed: “What’s Sola’s talent?”

Amidala stared at him blankly.

Tholme, though, winced (so his brief exposure to them had been sufficient for him to figure it out), and her parents exchanged a glance.

Tholme answered first. “She’s Force-deaf, Quinlan.”

“Huh.” That explained the family decision to hide the Force-sensitivity, in a simple way that gave them a defense from others seeking further, deeper reasons. (It also reminded him how Frizmar had pointed out the possibility, which made him wonder how pervasive the issue was, here.) “Was she born Force-deaf?”

Horror burst from Tholme—probably at a failure to notice the possibility himself, more than at the possibility, itself, precisely. It wasn’t as if parents abusing their children like that would be anything new to either of them. Not with their line of work.

Amidala was still staring. Was she following the conversation or cycling through memories?

“Yes,” Ruwee said quietly, sounding far more like his mother-in-law than what Quinlan remembered of his mother. “She was born that way. But you’re also right to ask.”

“What?!” Amidala blurted, indignation blossoming into the Force.

A reaction to the actual conversation in front of her. Good sign.

“Some Houses intentionally deafen their stronger Force-sensitive children,” her father repeated patiently. “Traditionally, it’s done with Force-suppressing foods until the child reaches majority, at which point they have the maturity to decide what to do about it for themselves. It’s why you hate hsuberry so much.”

“And why Lady Tapalo gave us such a hard time about not ensuring you were introducted to it while you were young enough to adapt,” Jobal murmured. “She went with a more permanent route with her son. It’s unfortunately legal.”

“From the standpoint of public safety,” Ruwee added, as a point. “We’re trying to get Sola to the point that her deafness doesn’t affect her life, but she may need treatment to quiet her projection so it doesn’t harm others. There are medications.”

“My mother thinks it’s why you Jedi disdain conventional mental health methodology,” Jobal continued. “So many of the treatments can affect a person’s Force sensitivity or capability—usually temporarily, but some of them…”

“Yes,” Tholme said thoughtfully. “I understand that a medication with such effects was part of what killed Tahl.”

That was news to Quinlan.

“Um,” Skywalker piped up. “She’s here. Tahl, I mean. As a ghost. I dunno if talking about her death is, uh…”

“If she minds, she’s welcome to say something,” Tholme answered, as a classic case in point of one reason he was disliked by some people who respected his acumen. He understood subtext and social niceties fine. He just held others to a standard of explicit communication that he rarely reciprocated.

“So if a Sith—” Quinlan bit his tongue too late, so he adjusted it: “If one of you turned out to be a Sith, you Naboo would have the person Force-blocked?”

The Naberries had to pause and think about that one, which wasn’t promising.

“I believe that would depend on the type of Sith,” Jobal said.

Tholme frowned. “Sith are Sith. The dark side destroys all it touches. Sith must destroy.”

That was patently false. “They had an empire,” Quinlan pointed out. Empires required building.

“Padawan!”

“Inconvenient facts are still facts, Master.”

“That’s the point, I believe,” Ruwee cut in, with a smooth ease that suggested his mother had given him a lot of experience playing peacemaker, from childhood. “The core code behind the Sith can be believed and applied to the self while excluding others.”

Quinlan hadn’t thought about that. “‘Peace is a lie; there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.’ Huh. You’re right.”

“Padawan!”

And days like this reminded him just how frustrating being a padawan had often been. “I’m not saying I agree with the philosophy. I’m just saying that the code could easily describe pursuit of strength and power and victory over self, not over others. It would be a difficult line to walk, but it’s in there.”

“Like how the code of the Jedi can be utilized to justify forcing homogeniety in expectations, rules, and applications,” Jobal said, “like those who insist all Jedi must be celibate.”

“Yes! Thank you.” He squinted at her. “You just went there on purpose.” Pushing him into a position of expressing approval of his master’s choice that led to her birth.

She flashed the sidelong pleased smile that Tholme also used, when called out.

“That’s not—” Tholme huffed. “Jedi preserve life.”

“As one application of our code,” Quinlan countered, accuracy being far more important than reinforcing the application he preferred, himself. “There are others.”

Tholme sighed at him and didn’t seem to notice that his daughter was reciprocating the curiosity that he’d displayed when witnessing her social dynamics with her family.

“Master Quinlan says he has to be ‘a self-absorbed asshole’ for his job,” Skywalker piped up. “He says he’s not a slave, but—”

 This again. “I’m not!”

”But—“

Aaaand he was in the mood to push. Lovely. “Not the time for that.”

“But—”

“Skywalker.” Quinlan waited until the kid looked him in the eye—something that admitted just how convinced he was that Quinlan wasn’t free. “I am not a slave. I am stuck to some degree, because of what sacrifices I’m willing to make. But that’s true of everyone.”

He could feel the weight of Tholme’s consideration, but he’d stayed in the bounds of what he was allowed to say. It was just—

“That’s a tad misleading in your situation, Quinlan,” Tholme said outright, then glanced to Skywalker. “He has someone actively seeking to treat him as property, and he has to be careful about what he does, else he’ll give her leverage to claim authority over him.”

“Master!”

“You’re unhappy, Quinlan. I wish I could do something about that. T’ra’s trying.”

“Yes, I did figure out that’s why your girlfriend got your old job, there.” Kriff, he shouldn’t have said that. He took some careful breaths, reached for calm. “Sorry.”

“Are we talking about the leader of the Kiffar?” Amidala asked hesitantly. “I don’t remember the title. She was murdered during the war…”

They all exchanged looks of varying degrees of concern and confusion.

Wait a minute. “You two know what she’s talking about,” Quinlan accused her parents.

“Not in the way you mean,” Jobal said.

“With the skills she displayed upon her cycle back, she’d obviously been involved in more than her share of fighting,” Ruwee clarified. “We’ve assumed.”

Amidala blinked rapidly, then flushed. “I apologize.”

“And that’s why we’ve brought you here,” her mother said. “You need to rest, rebuild your shields, so you don’t slip up at work.”

“I’m learning how to swim,” Anakin piped up, the immediate attempt at distraction all but announcing that he also had a clue as to what was going on, “and Obi-Wan says he’s supposed to help me read Basic, too.”

“Oh,” Tholme said, “I can help with—”

“No,” Quinlan snapped. “You are not touching Skywalker’s training.” Frizmar had the groundwork to properly understand Tholme’s approach, if he messed up Quin’s plans. Skywalker did not.

“But—”

“No, Master.” Quinlan held his master’s gaze, staying calm in the face of the frown. “I will dump you in the lake.”

It was both a threat and a reminder of the time Tholme did that very thing to Quinlan—as his ‘class’ on escape artistry. If he hadn’t understood that Tholme was expecting him to ‘read’ the ropes and figure it out despite being drugged, he would’ve panicked and possibly drowned.

Tholme had reasons for pushing Quinlan so far and so fast. (The experience in ‘reading’ things while under extreme stress was a lot of why, mere months later, some bounty hunters’ attempts to nab him had resulted in failure spectacular enough that his aunt had since stuck to more indirect, covert tactics.)

But having legitimate reasons for his actions didn’t make them any less cruel. It just meant that Quinlan didn’t report his erstwhile master for abuse, refused to use the same tactics with Aayla, and was careful about what he trusted his master with. Maybe Tholme would handle Skywalker fine, since there wasn’t any reason to particularly push him, but Tholme might also think of the Sith situation as due reason to push the kid hard enough to break him.

Tholme pulsed sorrow into the Force for Quinlan to feel. Not apology—he’d do it again, if he calculated it as the best option.

He also wouldn’t have fought the penalty if Quinlan had reported him. They were Shadows. Doing fripped-up stuff for the sake of the bigger picture came with the territory. That didn’t erase their culpability for those actions.

Quinlan looked away, glimpsed Skywalker scrutinizing him and Amidala frowning.

“How are you liking Naboo?” Ruwee asked.

Nobody answered.

Amusement entered the man’s tone. “That’s an open question for all you offworlders.”

“Oh!” Skywalker blurted.

Quinlan startled a bit, himself. That wasn’t a question he heard often. People usually asked him where he was headed next, when they were trying to politely suggest he leave.

“I like it.” Skywalker rambled on about the water until he talked himself into mentioning how his mother would love it and started getting choked up.

“Watto wouldn’t sell her to me,” Amidala said. “I did try.”

The kid stared at her in blatant wonder, his fondness increasing to the point that Quinlan lost track of the undercurrent of fear. “That’s where you went with Master, um, Siri? To get my mom?”

Amidala hesitated. “Yes, we went there. I’ll have my people keep an eye on it, in case Watto changes his mind about selling her.”

Watto? Quinlan called up the memory of a Toydarian who was being gossiped about just before he left Tatooine, for losing everything in the Boonta Eve Classic. “How much did you offer him?”

Anger pulsed in Skywalker, who whipped about and glared. He opened his mouth—then rocked back as if struck, eyes wide. “You hang out with slavers?!”

Tholme answered, “Well, we have to find out where the slaves are coming from, don’t we?”

Because that phrasing would be clear to a speaker of Basic as a second language. Or would soothe someone who was justifiably upset. Quinlan pressed the bridge of his nose with a palm.

“Because slaves aren’t worth talking to?” the kid snapped.

“Because—”

“Stop,” he cut in, before Tholme could muck this up any more. “Skywalker, there are details that can only be found out or confirmed by the slavers themselves. Same goes for their employees, clients, and slaves. Everybody has different pieces of the puzzle. It’s safer for everyone that way. Dealing with assholes is my specialty. There are other Jedi who mostly deal with victims.”

One such Jedi being Tholme, ironically enough, though not for the reason (or purpose) that the kid was looking for.

Quinlan turned to Amidala. “How much did you offer Watto?”

“I didn’t,” the woman answered. “I asked him how much.”

And the male refused to sell?

“Padmé Naberrie,” her mother scolded. “You went haring off into Hutt territory without telling us? What if something had gone wrong?”

Ruwee jotted something down on a notepad, ripped off the bit of flimsy, and slipped it across the table to Skywalker. “Message me your mother’s details, and I’ll see if I can help.”

“Watto probably isn’t going to sell, not if he’s refusing now when he needs the money,” Quinlan alerted him.

“Even so,” Ruwee said evenly. “The more incentive we give the owner to tell us if he does decide to sell, the better.”

The gleam in Jobal’s eye made Quinlan leery about these two getting involved. Sadly, her father shared it.

The young woman stormed into the room through Qui-Gon, startling him into losing his grip on the pincushion he was sure he’d been about to pick up—unsteadily, weakly, but it still would’ve been an achievement.

The older woman putting away cleaned linens didn’t even turn around. “Sola.”

“You fripped a Jedi?!”

The woman hesitated, then closed the cabinet, put down the basket. “Good afternoon, Sola,” she said pointedly.

Sola huffed. “Hi, Grandmother. I just found out my grandfather was a Jedi because Mom brought him here.”

The grandmother glanced at Qui-Gon with a frown.

«You can see me?» he asked, startled.

“Yes.” She directed her attention to Sola. “Winama and I had your parents by some Jedi we knew, from her sister’s friend group. Her lover died about a decade ago.”

Wait, what?

Sola spluttered. “And you’re just now saying something?!”

A spike in the Force erupted from Sola. The grandmother didn’t so much as flinch as she shunted it into a nearby heavy chair—her push far weaker but better aimed. “And you’re just now asking?”

The chair fell into pieces. Sola didn’t even notice.

«What?» Qui-Gon asked blankly.

The grandmother shot him a sour look and briskly put away the rest of the linens.

“Why did I need to ask?” the girl demanded. “These are my grandfathers that we’re talking about! Nana hid it because she’s such a House bitch, but you? You should’ve said something!”

The grandmother’s eyes narrowed. “Is that an order, my lady?”

Sola stiffened, expression stricken. “I didn’t mean…”

“Then think before speaking and say what you mean. You’re too old to fling your temper about.” She glanced pointedly at the chair.

Sola stared at the pieces, confused. “I…”

“Figuring yourself out lets you ask questions you actually want answers to.” The grandmother shut the cabinet, grabbed the basket, and left her granddaughter blinking at the destroyed chair.

Sola slowly approached it, tentatively touched an arm. “I don’t get it.”

«It’s the Force,» Qui-Gon said.

She didn’t react at all, apparently unable to hear him.

He frowned and looked around. He’d managed to pick up the pincushion. Maybe he could…

There, a piece of charcoal in the sewing bin. He concentrated, forced himself through the confusion and managed to pick it up.

One difficulty down.

He tried to get to the wall, but that felt too far. He managed to scrawl It’s the For on the floor, though, before he lost his grip.

The girl finally gathered herself from her musings on the chair and turned to leave the room. Qui-Gon’s message was between her and the door—as was Qui-Gon, trying to pick the charcoal back up so he could finish the word.

Sola shrieked.

Life as a Shadow was a cycle of whirlwind and waiting—oh so much waiting—so Aayla wasn’t surprised by the speed at which her grandmaster had her on her way back to Coruscant, without so much as a hint for what her master was going to be up to. Master Tholme had barely even given her instructions for what she was to do back at the Temple (classes. blergh!) before tossing her the courier’s information and heading off, himself.

The pilot was female, Human, and obviously an unlicensed smuggler who wanted to go legal but couldn’t afford the fees, giving Master Tholme an easy opening for what he could offer her for the rush to the Temple.

There was risk, of course—any female Twi’lek of Aayla’s age and coloring would sell for at least as much as what the pilot had been offered, and that was without accounting for her health and Force sensitivity. Master Quinlan would’ve sooner had her take his ship back to Coruscant, himself, considering the reduced potential risk to Aayla worth the increased potential risk to himself.

Master Tholme would be getting an earful, when her master found out about this—or would he? She was a senior padawan now, better able to defend herself if someone proved untrustworthy, so maybe not…

“You pilot?” the pilot asked.

“Huh?”

“You keep staring at the navicomp.”

Aayla’s lekku twitched in surprise before she could stop it. Argh. She blinked innocently. “Oh, I was just thinking.”

“About whatever you did to get shipped home so fast?”

“Huh?” Frustration nipped at her chest. She was better trained than this! “Um, wait, what? I’m not in trouble. An emergency just came up that I don’t have clearance to help with.”

The pilot eyed her with a frown. “That doesn’t explain the rush.”

Aayla stared blankly back, mind racing to figure out a reasonable explanation, suddenly wondering if she’d completely misunderstood why her master always got so upset when her grandmaster did this.

Comprehension flared in the pilot, without affecting her hard stare. “Your guardian needs to be more careful. You’ll be fudging my memory when we land, then?”

Aayla kept staring, memory flashing through all the little ways various Naboo had demonstrated nonchalance about Force usage… And now this one was oh so casually accepting a use of the Force that even other Jedi would be reluctant to believe or accept.

Her lekku twitched as she thought that through and finally answered, “No, but—”

Oh dear Force. Her negative surprised the pilot!

“You should talk to my grandmaster when you get back,” Aayla blurted. “The one who arranged the flight. Tell him you’d be okay with that. You’ll get more work.”

The pilot didn’t stop frowning. “I might do that.”

The rest of their flight back to Coruscant passed in simple—not easy or comfortable, not exactly—silence.

It was only later, as Aayla was back in her quarters, packaging her Naboo-made robes for cleaning, that she realized the pilot never had offered a name.

Chapter Text

The sound of a shriek froze air in Padmé’s lungs, and Anakin froze beside her, gaining a stillness that reminded her of Yané. Vos glanced at everyone, expression professionally bland, and spent an extra half-second on Anakin before he ran out for—

“Sola!” she finally got out.

“She’s just startled,” Mom commented, though she didn’t resume chopping some onions for Grandma Thule’s avocado salad, which Tholme had expressed a desire for after Dad went to find that grandmother.

Padmé stared at her mother.

“Ryoo and Ruwee are both closer to Sola than we are,” Tholme said. “I’m not sensing any danger, and Quinlan can call me in if needed.”

“Your daughter just screamed, Mom!”

“There are many types of screams, Padmé. That was surprise, not fear. You’ll understand if you’re a—“

Anakin, Mom, and Master Tholme—all Force-sensitives—whipped their attention to Padmé.

Shielding. Where was her shielding?

“Oh,” Mom said softly. “Oh, Padmé. I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

Something in Tholme’s eyes drove her to admit, “It was Before, not— I gave birth and died, Mom. I never got to raise them.”

“Them?” asked Anakin.

And that too-young voice reminded Padmé of all the things she shouldn’t—couldn’t—wouldn’t say yet.

She didn’t answer, but the fact that she’d had a multiple birth was oh so obvious from what she’d said.

Anakin nodded slowly. “Were they mine?”

The horror on Padmé’s face almost made Anakin think that he’d killed her because the babies weren’t his, but…her mom and the Jedi were also looking unsettled.

“Excuse me,” the Jedi said, “but I believe that explanations are in order.”

Lady Naberrie sighed. “Padmé is from…we’re not sure how far into the future, because we know better than to ask for details a time traveler hasn’t offered.”

Time travel? Not visions?

“Time travel.” The Jedi gave a little chuckle. “Of course it is.”

“I beg your pardon?” Padmé asked sharply—

—as laughter and fury spiked from the hallway, a flurry of warning and impending danger on both sides.

Ryoo was the one laughing, shaking her head at her daughter, which should have been soothing but felt like a warning.

The storm, though, came from Sola, who was just letting it build without trying to stop it. “Time travel?” she demanded. “You mean the thing that killed my sister six years ago is her future self? And you couldn’t be bothered to actually say so?”

She stepped in the room, motion tight and angry, and gestured at her grandmother. “Her, I understand. I never thought to ask her what was possessing Padmé’s body, and you could’ve hurt her for breaking House wishes without justifiable excuse.”

“Ruwee would never!” Lady Naberrie protested.

“Maybe not,” Sola admitted, “but that’s how she thinks, Mom. Social protocols. You know that. You take advantage of it often enough when roping her into the monthly dinners. You know she gets literal headaches from being around too many sentients.”

“She spent a few years on Coruscant,” said Lady Naberrie. “Theed is nothing.”

“Not. The. Point,” Sola bit out through grit teeth.

“Ability to handle something doesn’t mean you should have to,” Padmé said quietly, a bit distant, as if realizing that for herself, too. “Seriously, Mom. We’re not doing that anymore. How’s Varykino for you, Gran? We could have the family dinners here instead.”

“Theed is fine,” Lady Naberrie insisted.

Padmé shook her head. “I will no longer attend. Sola, feel free to visit… Oh, sorry. That won’t work.”

The storm paused as Sola focused on Padmé. “Visit when social protocol allows it? I’ll consider it, but please understand that six years of thinking you my sister’s murderer aren’t going to vanish overnight, and I’m not the Sola you knew.”

Padmé flinched.

The Jedi pointedly cleared his throat.

A sense like wind picking up filled the air, and it was focused on Lady Naberrie.

“Mom!” Sola snapped.

“But you don’t have to remember this conversation,” Lady Naberrie said. “It’s distressing you.”

“I want to remember!” To Padmé: “Was Mom this bad about consent before you came back, or is this her reaction to your jump?”

“You’re taking this rather well,” the Jedi commented, “I assume because it finally gives you a reason for what you’ve noticed for years, but you’re about to break the room. May I give some assistance?”

The storm shifted focus, and Sola’s eyes narrowed on the Jedi. “I’m about to break the room?”

“You don’t feel that?” Anakin asked, confused. “It’s like a sandstorm that’s ready to kill everything in its wake.”

Sola’s eyes widened, color fleeing her face. “Oh Allé— Yes, please.”

The Jedi approached her physically, not just with the Force, and brushed away the threads connecting Sola to the storm as he brushed her hair from her forehead. The storm puffed out into the air like dust stirred up by dropping something in it.

“There you go,” the Jedi said. “You didn’t sense it at all?”

Sola swallowed hard, still pale. “Grandma, when I destroyed that chair…how close did it come to hitting you?”

The amusement vanished from Ryoo, though pleasantness remained, reminding Anakin of the girls who had to pretend they enjoyed all sorts of horrible things done to them.

After a few seconds, Sola swallowed again. “Yes,” she whispered. “I want the answer to that question.”

“I punted it,” Ryoo answered. “I trust you’ll forgive me for not feeling up to dealing with another broken bone today.”

“Oh Allé!” Sola started pawing at a nearby cupboard. “Where’s the wine?”

“Eastern cellar, top left shelf. I don’t think your weight’s changed since I mixed that batch.”

Sola ran out.

“You designed a Force inhibitor for her?” the Jedi asked.

Ryoo glanced at him. “It seemed prudent.”

“What about for me?” Padmé asked.

Ryoo cast her a mild look. “Do you want one?”

“I—” Padmé paused. “Um, no.”

“Then it doesn’t matter if I’ve designed any for you.”

“Sola’s broken your bones?” Lady Naberrie jumped in. “I thought we had that under control. Why didn’t you say anything?”

Ryoo didn’t lose the pleasant smile, but her eyes… Even if she hadn’t admitted to having been a whore, Anakin would’ve guessed from that expression alone.

He grabbed the first distraction he could think of and asked, “Allé?”

“The goddess of safety,” Sola answered, as she returned with a flask in hand. “I’ve always preferred her. Padmé’s patron is Shiraya, the goddess of justice. Er. Was. Is?”

“Is,” Padmé agreed.

“Right.” Sola scowled at her. “You could have told me, too, you know.”

Padmé stared at her.

“Okay, I might not have believed it, not then before I saw how many Jedi you somehow know, but at least it would’ve given me the option to… Okay, fine.” She looked back over her shoulder, towards the way they’d come, and took a quick swig from the flask. “So who all knows? I guess the Jedi don’t, just think you have visions.”

The Jedi in the room, though, was frowning thoughtfully. “I do believe knowledge would explain some of my padawan’s actions. Quinlan does take visions seriously, but he isn’t usually so careful to warn others about them.”

“You trained Vos?!” Padmé sounded shocked.

“Yes,” he said patiently. “Is that surprising?”

Padmé drew herself short in the Force and stiffened her spine. “That… No, I suppose that does make sense. You’re both information operatives. You just have very different approaches.”

«It’s partially by design,» the lady Jedi ghost piped up, pulling out a chair and sitting at the table. «Tholme’s the scheming patriarch, Quinlan’s the brash fool, and Aayla’s the naïve beauty.» She plucked some fruit and started juggling it again. «All half true, and no more than half true.»

Tholme’s smile showed teeth. “And you, my dear, are the archivist too skilled with investigative research to be worth using in undercover operations.” Discomfort overtook his humor. “Er. Were. You were that archivist.”

The ghost laughed.

Sola and Padmé both looked confused.

“I’m sorry,” Padmé said, “but who are you?”

“Who’s who?” Sola squeaked. “And why is that fruit moving?”

“That’s the ghost,” Anakin said. “She’s a friend of Qui-Gon’s. He’s the Jedi who died in the fight.”

“She’s juggling it,” Padmé added, “and I thought ‘frivolous’ use of the Force was discouraged.”

«It is,» Tahl said, «but consider why. When Jedi avoid obvious uses of the Force except in emergencies, fewer people think about the dangers or opportunities in Force-sensitive persons walking around in everyday life.»

“Hiding what cannot be hidden,” Anakin said. “Like if your friend gets pit-sick, you make up jokes so the masters don’t notice and keep her in the pits.”

The confusion from those around him nearly caused him to bite his tongue as he drew himself back. He’d forgotten where he was, what he—

«I think that’s correct,» the ghost lady replied, «if I understand what you mean by ‘pit-sick’.»

His face ran hot.

“So you Jedi can be frivolous around us, since we don’t care,” Jobal said, giving the bowl in front of her a final stir before she stuck it under her mother’s nose. “Did I get the pepper right?”

“You forgot the kumquat,” Ryoo answered. “So Tahl’s here, her boyfriend’s getting scolded by the boys, and Winnie’s busy. Any other guests we need to know about?”

“Master Billaba!” Anakin blurted. “Um. Did you see her? Obi-Wan’s with her, right now.”

The Jedi’s interest perked up. “Oh?”

“Not like that,” Ryoo said blandly, as Tahl scowled at him.

“Can you blame me for wanting those two to be happy?” the Jedi asked Ryoo.

Her expression didn’t change.

The Jedi hesitated, studying her, then looked abashed. “No, you’re right. Those two would be a poor fit that way.”

“Does she even like men?” Padmé asked, in confusion. “I know Obi-Wan likes blondes…”

Ryoo plucked a plate from the table, studied it for a long moment, then dropped it on the Jedi’s foot.

Laughing would not be in anyone’s best interest, right now.

Quinlan kept reminding himself of that whenever he glimpsed or remembered that It’s the For on the floor, writing shakier than some children produced.

Ruwee Naberrie was a quiet man, naturally calm, the type that would’ve made an excellent Jedi but was perfectly contented as a civilian.

He also interacted easily with a ghost Quinlan could barely, kinda-sorta, see.

“My daughter is not capable of seeing you,” Lord Naberrie repeated for the umpteenth time, already.

(Okay, that was hyperbole. It was more like the fifth.)

“Some people are blind or deaf in their bodies,” Quinlan finally snapped in exasperation, borrowing the analogy from how Frizmar had explained it to him. “Sola’s deaf in the Force.”

The ghost fritzed in and out, but the «…can’t…pect…believe» was clear enough to fill in the gaps.

“She’s Force-deaf, Jinn. It’s not that hard to understand. A fourteen-year-old civilian realized it was possible with just a brief explanation of how Force empathy works.”

The speech got lost, but the heavy disapproving frown made Jinn’s gist clear enough.

“I explained because the kid is a Force empath!”

“Master Jinn,” Naberrie said, “if you refuse to respect the limits of hospitality, I’ll see you removed from the premises. My daughter cannot see you and thus has no way of knowing if you are an ally or would-be attacker.”

There was an ugly thought. “Are there malicious ghosts on Naboo?”

“Oh yes,” the man replied, showing his mother oh so clearly, then paused, eyeing him.

Quinlan waggled his eyebrows and smiled in a friendly, C’mon out with it.

“Advising a Jedi to avoid Old Theed would invite the opposite action,” Naberrie said carefully, “but if you must go there at some point, please take my mother-in-law.”

Telepathy (which Quinlan suspected Ryoo Thule had) would be of great benefit when navigating a place with malicious spirits. “You don’t exorcise them?”

Naberrie visibly considered—and ditched—multiple explanations before settling on: “They stay in the catacombs, and suffice to say if you can’t handle them, you aren’t ready for what’s past them.”

«What are you talking about?!» Qui-Gon demanded—suddenly clearly visible, all translucent and blue, and glaring in their faces.

Quinlan exchanged a look with Naberrie. The man’s polite expression didn’t waver as he slowly shook his head.

Don’t do it, he told himself. Calling folks on their bullshit required careful handling, planning, and context.

It’s the For caught his eye again. Of all the idiotic ways to handle that…

Oh, what the kriff? Who was going to listen to the complaints of a ghost? “Aw, did Yoda’s favorite get his feefees hurt because we were ignoring him?”

They dropped out of hyperspace over Naboo, the image of which always perplexed Garen. The planet core violated a lot of basics of physics. You’d think someone would realize that meant it wasn’t natural and would then end up wondering how it was constructed or what held it together and maaaybe start digging into some of those secrets the core Houses protected…

“Wait,” Sar said, as Garen reached for the comm to get in the queue to land.

Seconds ticked by in silence, the distance and movement of Sar’s eyes the only sign she was checking something.

She blinked once and returned to normal. “Depa will amuse herself in the market by your family’s villa while you drop me off in Theed.”

“We’re splitting up?”

Sar hesitated, then—tentative and clearly unused to that sort of contact—patted his arm.

He stared at her.

“She’s reasonably stable, right now. I can start on why I need to be here, and you can pick up your corvette without me.”

A small, hopeful smile brightened Sar’s face.

“Uh…”

She held the expression, without any of the changes that would’ve been very helpful cues for him to have, right now—but she was also a mind healer and doubtless had enough control over her body to prevent things like blushing, so he couldn’t be sure…

“I’m sorry. This is really presumptuous to ask, but… Are you sweet on me?”

There was the flush he’d been watching for, faint but there. “I assume you want the honest answer, rather than the comfortable one.”

“I would prefer that, yes.”

Sar sighed. “I have no idea. I feel…interested and curious about you, specifically, but I don’t know if that’s my own feelings or just bleedover from how Depa feels drawn to you because you could kill her.”

She plucked at her sleeve. “My position as a mind healer in the Temple had…constraints I won’t have here, and I won’t have my old master able to smell if I do things he…disapproves of.”

There was pain in that sentence. “Your master’s the type to report differences, not support them?”

“Insofar as the context we’re speaking of, yes.” Her dark eyes locked onto his. “As far as he’s concerned, the way that my bond with my sister helps me detach from patients is a very good thing.”

“Ah. So…he’s the ‘my way or you’re wrong’ type.”

“Very much so. He means well, and I frankly haven’t minded, but…since I have an opportunity, I’d like to make use of it. I’d like…” She licked her lips. “That is, if you’re interested.”

This was awkward on sooooo many levels. “Um.”

“And I do mean interested,” she said quickly, “not just willing. I don’t know if my shielding would hold, or if the enmeshment with my sister would bleed over into a partner, or… Depa would probably be able to listen in. I doubt she’d want to do so, but…”

“The possibility would be there. Right.” He eyed her, sitting perfectly poised as a Jedi ostensibly ‘should’. “To be honest with you, I’ve never seriously considered you that way, and I have no idea if I’m interested. I’ll have to think about it. But even if we did hook up, I’m polyamorous. You might have a problem with that.”

She frowned. “Why would I? It’s not as if I’d own you.”

…Right. She was a consistent Jedi. That was promising.

Promising? Was he actually considering this? “Are you interested in me specifically, or just in getting laid?”

Sar took some seconds to mull on that. “Both, I think.”

“Okay. For the sake of your future hypothetical relationships, you’ll need to learn to either drop hints or be blunt about what you want. You won’t always be dealing with people who are Jedi or who are familiar enough with your mannerisms to notice when you change them.

“For now…how about I drop you off in Theed, pick up the corvette, then come back to Theed to take you clubbing tonight? See what goes from there.”

“Clubbing,” she said thoughtfully. “I’ve never really understood what that is.”

Dear Force. And he’d thought Luminara was sheltered.

Sar’s master, no matter how genuine his care for her, shouldn’t have been able to control her this much. “There’s something very wrong with what our Order considers ‘acceptable’ treatment of padawans.”

A scowl darkened her face, anger welling up in her aura. “Not just padawans,” she muttered.

“What was that?”

Her emotions shifted to weariness, just like that. “Ferus Olin was supposed to be my padawan, but another master played politics to get him shifted off to AgriCorps instead.”

“What?!” That was… Garen had no words. “Why?”

“He’s my nephew.”

He quickly did the math and…yeah, that fit the year Depa had disappeared. Sometimes he hated being right. “There’s gotta be a workaround for that. I’ll look into it. Maybe one of the other Orders could—”

“He disappeared,” she said bitterly. “Taken by slavers. Didn’t even make it to his first assignment.”

Her eyes glinted, the woman showing where the Jedi would usually hold control. Something tightened in Garen’s gut.

“Depa doesn’t even know.”

He drew in a sharp breath. He should’ve thought of that. “No offense, Sar, but…that’s a good thing.”

“You don’t understand,” she said quietly. “Depa doesn’t know he’s her son. He was adopted by a family, and they meant to keep him, but his Force talents were stronger than they were able to deal with. Nobody involved in the adoption knew Ferus was the child until I filed to be his master.”

A few tears fell. She swiped them away, with a scowl at her fingertips. “I’m sorry. I realize this is manipulative. I’m not intending to pressure you or burden you.”

Force help him. “Sar,” he said carefully, “you are aware that expressing emotions is healthy, right?”

“Of course, but inflicting them on others is unkind.”

Oh no. Oh Force no. “Do you tell your patients that?”

“Of course not. What their friend group considers kind is for them to negotiate for themselves.”

Garen bit his lip. “Do you have friends?”

Silence answered, and her eyes were glinting again.

“I think I do,” she said quietly, “but I don’t have enough exposure to what friendship is, outside the Order, to be sure. And even if I do, they’re all Temple-focused Consulars. Having a padawan would’ve helped expand that. I wasn’t going to let my nephew’s training suffer from my own limits; pawning him off with other masters for missions would’ve… It’s all moot now.”

He carefully, giving her plenty of time to stop him, leaned forward and kissed her gently. Her supple lips tasted of salt and stars, and they parted to invite him in.

He broke off, pulled back, turned back towards the viewport so he wouldn’t see the heavy breathing he could still hear over the thrumming of his blood. That was more satisfying than he’d expected, to be honest. He wasn’t sure what that said about him.

Her sadness was still there, of course—only a self-absorbed fool expected a kiss to erase anything—but it had softened a little, mellowed a little, and he caught the bright edge of curiosity that he was more used to sensing from her sister.

He cleared his throat. “Um, okay, you should know I get tested for disease regularly, and I am in a committed but open relationship.”

“Reeft,” she said, her voice so steady that she might’ve adjusted her hormones with the Force, like Bant could. “I’m inexperienced, not unobservant.”

The humor startled him into a laugh. Sar was…different from his usual type, but he had a feeling she’d be a lot more fun than anyone back at the Temple would ever believe. “I think I could get used to you.”

That didn’t come out right.

But the small smile that lit up her aura said she understood what he’d meant, anyway.

Chapter Text

The attack, when it came, wasn’t exactly a surprise.

Eirtaé hit the floor hard, because she didn’t know any other way to land upon being Force-shoved out of bed, but she curled her back enough to avoid risking her head or neck.

Still would bruise something awful, and the grit in the reeking carpet left scrapes that would need cleaning, but for now Eirtaé had to deal with the part of all this that was surprising:

That shot had been a sniper. She’d expected something more hand-to-hand, more…Jedi.

The so-called ‘Dark Woman’ had her lightsaber in hand but not activated, grim attention directed at the window. “Any bounties on you that you know of?”

“If there are, they’d be for live capture,” slipped off Eirtaé’s tongue before she thought about it—which confused her, before she paused and realized that was true. Her biological father was doubtless quite concerned about her, right now, and he would want her very much alive.

The Jedi’s glance held surprise, which was quickly released, to dissipate into the Force. Eirtaé caught herself reaching out with her hand as if to touch that intangible sensation, and drew back.

“Haven’t encountered that one yet?” the Jedi asked with surprising gentleness as she directed their exit route with her eyes.

Eirtaé obeyed the silent order and countered the Jedi’s reassuring tone with a casual one. “I tried the slice thing Vos does and hurt myself pretty badly, I think, but a ghost patched me up and led me back to him.”

This surprised glance was longer.

It also repeated a few times as they slipped out of the room, down the hall, and through the service exit without drawing the attention of the bored doorman who was supposed to keep watch for that. (He was admittedly distracted—by porn, if the sounds coming from his reader and his person were any indicator—but the door was still in his direct line of sight.)

The Dark Woman actually took Eirtaé to a private spaceport, to a shuttle that was obviously her own, carefully triple-checking everything before clearing it for progress.

Once they were on her shuttle and safely locked up, the Jedi finally relaxed. Slightly. The scrutiny she was giving Eirtaé was intense, but curiosity seemed to have won out over concern.

“I seem to have made some flawed assumptions about why you were sent to me,” the Dark Woman said.

Eirtaé gave her a flat look, unamused. “Vos sent me to Kiffex. For a crash course in masking.”

The Jedi stared back blankly for the space of a few heartbeats, then let out a slight laugh, as if at herself.

“Tholme didn’t mention that, I take it.”

That accursed surprise flared again.

The Dark Woman visibly restrained herself from her first reaction, choosing to think, instead. “There is an urge to meddle when we think our former padawans are making mistakes,” she said finally. “But I’m thinking he mucked this one.”

Only he mucked it? Eirtaé bit her tongue against sniping.

The ruefulness on the Dark Woman’s expression suggested she heard the thought anyway. “I’ll take you to T’ra.”

“I think not,” Eirtaé declared, her political training rearing its head to infuse a presence in her words. “I had reason for using public transport, Master Jedi.”

“There is no such thing as ‘public transport’ to Kiffex.”

“Have you not heard of ‘plausible deniability’?” she snapped. “I took the transport here so I could order bacta for Naboo and conveniently slip away in the middle. I still have to place that order—a delay which can be excused, since there are the reports of conveniently timed shortage, but I can’t leave Thyferra until I at least try.”

“If you had your own plans already, why have you been cooperating?”

Exasperation spilled out. “If Tholme went through the trouble of recruiting you, he never contacted his girlfriend. What was I going to do, show up on her doorstep uninvited? And then your insistence on moving made clear that you’re hiding from someone who’s actively tracking you—someone who would probably find the young, untrained Force-sensitive heir of her House a valuable hostage!

“And if any of this is surprising to you, maybe you should actually get details before agreeing to one of Tholme’s schemes!”

That was too loud, too angry. Eirtaé wrestled with her emotions, fighting to touch something other than the frustration and fury that had welled so quickly. She needed something else to anchor on before she could cut—

Wait, the slice, as elegant as it was, hadn’t worked for her. She remembered how the Dark Woman had handled her emotions earlier and forced herself back, to stop struggling, to let go.

And the emotions, oh so loud and strong, relaxed their grip on her, loosening and stretching out into the Force without a ripple.

The emotions weren’t gone, but they were softer, lighter. They were also translucent, something she could see through without much effort.

And that was with her instinctive, unpracticed use of the technique. If she practiced and got adept with it…

Eirtaé eyed the Dark Woman with suspicion. If this was the Jedi’s preferred method, any readily-detectable emotion could easily be feigned.

The Jedi was scowling at her, but the expression seemed more thoughtful than upset. “I’m…different from a lot of Jedi,” the Dark Woman said.

Eirtaé had her doubts about that. ‘Damaged’ seemed par for the course, for the Order.

“My last student…was taken by slavers. For some reason, she now believes I hated her, sold her, and never searched for her.”

She tried to read between the lines. “If your handling of me is any indicator of how you treated her, I can understand why.”

The Dark Woman flinched but held her silence…and, interestingly, didn’t even try to justify herself.

Eirtaé studied her. “Was she your first student?”

“No. One sits on the High Council.”

So she’d had previous successes with her methods and yet she was willing to assume they had caused her failure.

Ancestors, the Jedi needed therapy.

Eirtaé sighed. “When you met me, what precisely were you attempting to teach?”

“Danger can come from anywhere, especially those you consider friends.” The Dark Woman hesitated. “In hindsight, I should have caught on sooner that you already knew that.”

It wasn’t actually an apology, but Eirtaé chose to hear it as an implicit one.

“So,” the Jedi said, abruptly stern. “Masking. What’ve you learned so far?”

Eirtaé treated the Jedi to a bland stare. She wasn’t going to hand out reasons to punish Vos, if she could help it.

The sternness melted into a delighted grin. “I’ll just start with the basics then, shall I?”

She assented with a tight smile of her own. It was about time.

Mid-stride towards the landing field, Depa had paused, glanced at the sky, and redirected herself towards the market. At a loss for what else to do, Obi-Wan followed, and the pair of them had been checking out the vendors since.

Depa bought a basket with credits she apparently kept with her at all times, pointedly ignoring the looks some of the older people were directing at her.

And at him. His neck itched from the attention. “You’ve been here before?”

“No,” Depa said absently. “They’re recognizing my sister.”

Obi-Wan stared blankly. Her sister?

Her look cued him in.

“Oh,” he said. “You’re joking.”

She tossed a package of tea into her basket. “You,” she said, glaring and waggling a finger at him, “need to remember that many mission requests asked for you.”

What in the Force was she talking about?

Depa let out a sound between a growl and a sigh, and she scowled over the nearby lake. After a few seconds in which she did something in the Force—too subtle or something for him to figure out what—the frustrated, hurting woman fell away and was replaced by the high councilor again.

“Many of your missions have been because you were personally requested,” she said briskly, sounding like…not quite herself, but he couldn’t place who she was reminding him of, right now. “Not Jinn. You are competent and intelligent. Trust your instincts.”

She switched to the man manning the stall selling extracts, who seemed very uncomfortable about the variety that she’d noticed—a ‘hsuberry’—and was reluctant to accept the money she handed him for it. “Yes, I know. Thank you.”

Obi-Wan bit his tongue, waiting until they were out of earshot before discreetly alerting her, “The vendor didn’t actually say anything.”

She nodded, with a gesture at the market at large. “It’s—“ Her gaze sharpened on him, and she abruptly dropped her hand and gave a polite smile. “Shall we go see Garen?”

As if it had been timed to fit her words, a corvette with Jedi Order markings passed by to land in the field.

Obi-Wan frowned at her. What exactly did she know about Naboo that he didn’t?

He felt Depa flick her attention back towards the villa, checking on them there.

She straightened, hopping a bit on her heels. “Oh! We can take Garen to Varykino. It’s been ever so long since he’s seen his brother, and I don’t think he’s ever met his nieces.”

“What?”

Depa laughed, obviously having intended to startle him, and dragged him towards the landing field.

The buffet had steaming dumplings, the scent savory and nuanced and making Sabé’s mouth water. She hesitated but ultimately helped herself—she was a primary shift handmaiden, so she had leverage to claim ignorance if somebody tried scolding her for taking something that wasn’t meant for her.

It was an odd morning meal for Theed, even for the sake of something prepared because someone Important was around. Local cuisine was often lighter, tangy, with fluffy cake-like bread and fruit. This sort of salty, easy-to-eat ball of sticky rice and fish and seaweed was more of a…

Oh, it was more of an UnHoused thing, wasn’t it?

Sabé stared at her tray, a boulder growing in her throat. Was this a warning? A taunt?

Was that a crack in the upper left quadrant of the plastic? So hard to tell, with how the coloring was marbled.

A cleared throat caught her attention, and a hand caught Sabé’s tray when she nearly dropped it in surprise.

Nina held the food long enough for Sabé to keep her feet, then passed it back and pulled her along, out of the cafeteria and towards one of the private meeting rooms. “You’re late.”

“I’m sorry, I—“ Wait. Sabé frowned at her. “I’m off.” How could she be late when she wasn’t even working, today?

Nina opened a meeting door without seeking permission to enter, first—extremely rude, by Naboo standards.

Apparently it was a Corellian nicety, since Saché just glanced at the two of them, from her seat at the head of the table where Rabé and Yané also sat with their own breakfasts. “Thanks. Staying?”

“I’m not primary shift,” Nina answered, obviously keeping up with her cousin’s meaning just fine.

Saché leaned back, stretching her healing leg. “You’re as close to an outside eye as I can use, on this.”

Nina considered that, shrugged, and took the seat beside Yané. She pushed a chair out for Sabé with her foot. “There’s a leak?”

Saché’s eyes narrowed. “There’s a…imbalance of information that I believe is going to bite us if we don’t do something about it now. Need-to-know protocol, and nobody else needs to know. You’re great at boot camp.”

Nina tensed, abruptly alert, and asked sharply, “Who’s the mind reader?”

Sabé blinked, trying to connect that to the ‘boot camp’, while Yané tried to sink into her chair, as obviously uncomfortable as Rabé was comfortable, watching those conversing as if they were playing smashball.

It took Sabé a few seconds to realize Saché was waiting for her.

The expectant expression gave warning even as Saché said, “Amidala, apparently.”

Yané gave a surprised squeak.

Nina glanced pointedly at the other primary shift handmaidens in the room, wordlessly asking her cousin something.

“Lady Eirtaé Frizmar is an honorary handmaiden and thus exempt from full security procedures,” Saché said stiffly.

Nina relaxed, so she’d been wondering why Eirtaé wasn’t here. “Feel free to invite me to that meeting, too.”

Saché hummed. “Best to handle that one in private, I think. But let’s start there—the only person I’ll be sharing what we talk about with is Eirtaé, when she gets back from whatever she’s doing for that Jedi she’s been hanging out with.”

“Wait!” Rabé blurted, eyes wide. “Eirtaé’s on an errand for Vos?”

At their attention, she flushed. “No, it isn’t— I’m not— I mean, you all know what he is, right? What kind of errand would he even send her on?”

“Yes,” Saché said mildly. “I’m curious on that, myself, and expect that the answer means it’s best I have that conversation with her in private.”

“Because you think she can compel people like Jedi do,” Rabé said, as if referencing a previous conversation they’d had.

“Eirtaé?” Sabé asked blankly. “You think Eirtaé can do that?”

“She’s done it a few times, or so it seems,” Saché said briskly. “She gives ample opportunity for the target to be reasonable, first, so it warrants watching and mind shielding, not seeking rid of her.

“But it’s convenient that both persons of a House that we work with are Force-sensitive. Considering the odds of Force sensitivity in general…

“Rabé, I understand you’re researching Houses. My impression is that they tend to intermarry. Most of those that marry outside the House lines are illegitimate, with interestingly secret fathers.”

Rabé had been about to grab a dumpling with her fork and nearly stabbed her hand, instead. “Um. That…isn’t quite what I was researching, so I don’t know how common it is, but I did see some, er, case examples.”

“Such as?”

“Amidala’s father? But her mother has the same sort of background, and she’s only of a House because of her marriage, not by birth, so I’m not sure it’s really a House thing. Both of Amidala’s grandmothers were on Coruscant at the time, apparently running a bar.”

“Near the Jedi Temple.” Saché’s statement wasn’t a question. “Which could explain all the Jedi interest in Her Highness—whether or not her grandfathers came from their Order, her grandmothers were at least known to some Jedi. Jinn possibly knew them.”

Oh gods. What if Jinn had been one of the queen’s grandfathers?

“According to Eirtaé,” Saché continued, “Amidala has visions—which I understand have been confirmed as accurate and reliable?”

Sabé nodded hard, then noticed Rabé was hesitating, narrowing her gaze at the older handmaiden. What had she noticed?

“So we want to work with that, but that means we have to limit who knows she has them. The five of us on primary shift—we can cover and pretend she got the information in front of one of us, and if we mix up who was there when she found out, it just sounds as if we’re protecting a source.”

“What about Captain Panaka?” Yané asked, barely audible.

“Quarsh can suck my—“ Saché cut herself off, with a sharp look at Yané. “Quarsh needs information for security purposes, but I’m not seeing how it’s his business where that information came from unless he’s the source of it.”

“Oh,” Nina murmured. “I see.”

The smile Saché gave her cousin was more of a pained smirk than anything else. “Figured you would. For family’s sake?”

Nina tapped the table, thinking. “If I can reciprocate.”

Saché winced but said easily, “Fair trade. With the caveat that our respective worlds come first, if Naboo and Corellia are at odds.”

“I’ll have to tell Dom, to get official approval to do this,” Nina said frankly, “and he at least needs warning before he deadnames you. He’ll do it anyway, but then you can shoot him for it.”

Sabé hadn’t realized Saché could be deadnamed, but a recent transition did possibly explain how she so obviously knew Captain Panaka well, in a professional capacity, yet was new to the queen’s employ as a handmaiden.

Anticipation of a pleasant memory softened Saché’s smile, then she gathered herself and focused on the (very confused) younger women (though Rabé seemed to have some inkling, and that frown was more unhappy than thoughtful).

“All right. Nina’s just agreed to take the credit when we absolutely must name someone as a source for something that doesn’t affect planetary security, and I’ll do the same for her when she’s back with CorSec.”

Back with… Sabé stared at Nina. Oh. “The university thing is a cover?”

“A polite fiction for the sake of people who don’t understand the difference between patriotism and nationalism. I love Corellia, but that doesn’t mean I hate Naboo or wish it ill. If anything, my love of Corellia makes me wish Naboo well, since the Corellian shipyards use Naboo plasma, and that’ll go best if Naboo views Corellia favorably.”

“That’s why you never got the option to work close security,” Rabé said, in realization, but there was a professional distance in her tone that hadn’t been there before. “You were hired because you could be trusted enough to help the security forces, but Captain Panaka didn’t want you working directly with the queen, yourself.”

“As if planet of origin has anything to do with trustworthiness,” Saché muttered. “I was born on…” She shook her head.

“Corellia?” Yané offered.

“No, Mom went into labor while in hyperspace. I’m Naboo because of her, Corellian because of Dad, and then I have a tern citizenship because Denon is weird and bases its nationalization laws on if you were born there, not on if you or your parents know or care anything about it.”

“You want me to find the mind shielding classes for them?” Nina asked. “So it isn’t linked to you?”

“Please. And you three will take them, by the way. Quarsh should’ve been including that in the curriculum all along; it’s basic intelligence procedure.”

Saché passed Yané a flimsy. “That’s for you to take your exam for majority. If your mother shows up, you’re busy, so sorry, and have to get back to me immediately.”

“Gave up trying to work with Quarsh on that?” Nina asked.

Saché sighed. “Sabé, I understand you’ve resumed contact with your father?”

Naboo Intelligence, Sabé realized. Saché was Naboo Intelligence and liaisoned with CorSec, back before she became a handmaiden. “Um.”

“Have you paid for Yané’s test yet?” Rabé cut in. “I have most of it in cash, right now, and I could have the rest in two days without any noticeable changes in my purchases.”

Saché frowned at her.

Rabé shrugged, a bit self-consciously. “I started buying less when out but withdrawing the difference from my old spending habits in credits. It seemed like a good idea for when I want to buy a book that Captain Panaka wouldn’t want me reading or something.”

Nina was watching Rabé with undisguised interest, and even Saché was…curious.

(That wasn’t the right word for the cant of Saché’s head and mouth and eyes, but it was the closest Sabé could figure.)

“What gave you that idea?” Saché asked.

Rabé’s poise shifted into something stiffly polite, and she gave a tight smile. “Family.”

“Sometimes family has expectations based on their preferences and skills rather than your own,” Nina said, sympathy heavy.

Saché scrutinized each of them except her cousin in turn, a pause in the conversation where they all took advantage of to eat (Rabé readily, Yané hesitantly after Sabé had followed Rabé’s lead).

“My priority is Naboo herself,” the half-Corellian handmaiden said clearly. “I don’t care if you have other ones—as long as you’re not harming Naboo by it, you’re welcome to your own interests. But we all need to communicate.”

“I’ll be signing up for the decoy protocol as soon as I pass this,” Yané said. “And we’re getting Panaka fi—“

“Freedom to demonstrate Her Highness should fire him,” Rabé interrupted, too quickly, but before Sabé could think of something. If Saché knew what they were planning there, she’d have to choose between respecting their plans and respecting Panaka, her colleague and possible friend, and that wouldn’t be kind to her.

And…why had Saché waited so long before even starting to act on her own, anyway? The rest of them all had plans underway, and she was just starting, even for things she’d known about longer.

As tempting as it was to let the Saché take over and organize everything…Sabé had the uncomfortable feeling that would be a mistake. But why?

“Eirtaé could’ve been queen,” Sabé murmured—to herself, as the thought formed, but Rabé jumped on it.

“Yes, Eirtaé’s trained in all this, and she’ll understand what the queen’s doing in ways we don’t. We’ll talk to her ourselves, and she can decide for herself how much she wants to say where she’s been.”

Saché frowned. “Considering her apparent Force-sensitivity—”

“You’re not comfortable trusting her, we understand,” Rabé said pleasantly, smiling, “but we’re not comfortable trusting you. You’re new to the queen’s employ, worked with Panaka under King Veruna, and have ties to other planets’ intelligence agencies. You have expertise we don’t, and we respect that and will consult you as we find appropriate, but our job is to support the queen, not you, and what we do in our spare time is our own affair no matter what you think.”

“They have known Eirtaé for longer than they have you,” Nina said—pointedly, Sabé thought. “And I do believe they have the right to decide their own actions, here.”

Saché turned her frown on her cousin. “Nina—”

“Remind me where you were during the invasion? With them on Coruscant? Oh no, that’s right—you were with me in Camp Four, and getting shot in the leg for your mouthing off to a droid.” Nina watched her cousin with a flat expression. “Yané handled the captivity better than you did.”

“Well, she has more practice!”

Sabé shared Yané’s flinch.

“And you have more training,” Nina said pointedly. “You’re annoyed and frustrated with Quarsh, I know, but there’s something else bothering you—and I don’t just mean the Force sensitiv…

“Oh. Yeah, I find that disconcerting, too.” The Corellian gave them all a tight smile. “Back home, you lot would still be children. Thinking of you as professionals in your own rights is…difficult. Saché specialized in domestic violence against minors, so you’re an age she’s used to having to manage. I’m surprised she’s sat on the urge to meddle this long, to be honest.”

That…just made Saché’s delay before helping Yané all the more strange. That background should’ve gotten her helping Yané sooner.

Something was very wrong here.

Sabé stared uncomfortably at Rabé. How were they going to get out of this?

Yané jumped to her feet, hunched over the flimsy Saché had given her. “I’ll, um, go study,” she blurted, voice still soft.

She fled the meeting. Rabé grabbed the opportunity to claim the abandoned breakfast tray to clean up, and Sabé followed her lead in leaving.

Rabé’s bland expression didn’t fit with her white knuckles on the breakfast trays (Yané’s and hers) that she held, but she held her tongue through turning in the trays for cleanup and leading the way to the moon garden. The smokewood trees’ bleak dark-toned monochrome fit Sabé’s mood, and she imagined Rabé’s, as well.

A bit of neon green caught her eye as Rabé strolled towards a bench.

“Oh, looks like some of the paint got missed.”

“I’ve been wondering how long it would take anyone to report it,” Rabé said distantly.

Sabé eyed her. “Are you okay? You’re acting weird.”

“We just saw Saché negotiate trade of planetary secrets with her cousin.”

They had? Sabé thought about the conversation. “But it’s just for little things we need to be able to cite a witness for, nothing that’ll hurt Naboo.”

“‘Little’ by whose judgement? And ‘nothing that’ll hurt Naboo’ in what way?”

Sabé blinked, realizing—

Rabé threw out her arms. “So what do we do? Report Saché for treason? She has Nina behind her. They both know about the queen’s visions and Eirtaé’s Force-sensitivity that’s strong enough Vos recruited her for something. Her meddling with Yané could’ve been a threat to talk to her mom if we don’t behave. And I stupidly told her about the queen’s parentage and handed her more leverage!”

Sabé struggled to wrap her head around what Rabé had pieced together, to keep up. Politics like this were so very much not her thing. “We need Eirtaé.”

“Yes!” Rabé agreed. “And our own mind-shielding classes, not whatever Nina comes up with—though I think that reference to ‘Dom’ might’ve been her attempt to remind Saché that their bargain needs approval and awareness from higher-ups. Master Mundi sent me an introductory syllabus so we can make sure we’re working from the same foundation. I’ll copy it to share, but we need to leave Saché out of this.”

“So we need, um, unofficial scramblers?” How had Saché found out so much of what she’d known in the meeting today?

Rabé startled. “I didn’t think of that. Kark. I’m calling—” She blinked at something behind Sabé. “Can we help you?”

A polite distance behind them stood a Jedi with no small resemblance to the high councilor Depa Billaba.

The woman gave a slight bow. “I am Jedi Knight Sar Labooda, and I believe we have mutually compatible interests.”

Maybe the resemblance was a coincidence.

“I apologize for eavesdropping, but it sounds as if you could use an ally willing to equip you to handle your own problems behind the backs of those who would rather you stay unable to.”

The amused quirk to her lips reminded Sabé of Billaba and confused her all over again.

The Jedi pulled something from her sleeve and tossed it to Rabé. “It’s on.”

Rabé held up what she’d caught for Sabé to see. The scrambler’s notification light blinked blue. Active. “I thought the Jedi had returned to Coruscant.”

“Some planets can warrant a Jedi stationed regularly or constantly, in a position we call a ‘Watchman’. It’s been decided that Naboo qualifies.”

“Decided by whom?” Rabé asked suspiciously.

Gods, that smile made this Jedi look so much like Billaba that Sabé couldn’t remember what her name was.

“Master Windu, actually, but implementing the assignment from the Order’s side would have been…complicated, so I have a proposition for you.”

Sabé almost didn’t catch the data reader tossed at her.

“If sufficient persons in your position formally request a specific available Jedi to support your queen, that precedent will make it so much easier for that Jedi to be installed as Watchman.”

Gods. The Order had politics too?

The Jedi glanced between the two of them, and Sabé had the uncomfortable feeling that the woman’s gaze dove beyond the physical realm.

“If that helps,” the Jedi said, “I do know what’s wrong with your queen.”

“Wrong?” Rabé challenged.

“Very much so.” The Jedi paused. “Ah. She hasn’t told you, then.”

Chill ran down Sabé’s spine.

“Hasn’t told us what?”

The Jedi considered them carefully, and Sabé just knew the woman wasn’t limiting her perception to her vision.

After a few disconcerting seconds of increasing goosebumps, the Jedi seemed to reach a decision.

“Well,” she said slowly, “they aren’t visions.”

Chapter Text

Breakfast was an…awkward affair, and not only because Quinlan Vos was kicking himself.

Ryoo ate briskly, treating the meal as a necessity rather than a social event, with just a few quiet inquiries as to how various people were doing—including Master T’ra, to the point that Quinlan suspected Ryoo actually knew his erstwhile master’s girlfriend and not just that T’ra Saa was a Neti and thus a sapient tree.

Depa was similarly focused on the food but a bit more casual about it—or at least she was, before Winnie arrived. After, she hastily finished her breakfast and left the table. Understandable, considering how tired she was; fatigue wouldn’t help her manage the memories Winnie brought, and Skywalker’s age…

The kid himself was chattering with Obi-Wan and the Naberries. Sounded like fun stories from Anakin’s past, with the others mentioning things from when they were Anakin’s age. Obi-Wan included Quinlan’s faux pas of teaching them all about sex younger than the teachers liked, which was a good choice—Anakin would need to remember that he knew things that others his age weren’t supposed to know yet.

(Amidala said something about deciding to go into politics rather than painting. Her family’s startled expressions suggested that hadn’t happened, this time around, so maybe someone should plant some evidence that she’d at least tried painting at one point.)

Winnie herself easily conversed with both Qui-Gon and Tholme. She also oh-so-casually mentioned that the Jedi should bring a local with them if they visited a cavern where a number of Force ghosts lingered—which would’ve been suspicious in itself, even if a sigh and frown didn’t come from her son and daughter-in-law, specifically. (Not that Tholme showed sufficient concern about that. Of course he didn’t.)

Qui-Gon was barely visible, wobbling in and out, usually scowling. (Except for when he knocked over a chair. He’d then looked annoyed, but Winnie had praised that as progress. Somehow. Sola had fixed the chair and smiled a half-meter to the left of Jinn.)

And while all this flowed around him, Quinlan Vos, Jedi Knight, poked at his own breakfast, feeling downright ashamed of himself. He knew better. His sixteen-year-old padawan knew better.

He’d let his annoyance and fatigue kick him into mistaking assumptions for fact, and worse: he’d acted on that assumption, snapping at Jinn.

It was a childish mistake—embarrassing, for sure, but that wasn’t what made it bother Quin so much.

No. What kept nagging at him was that his apology for doing it had confused Jinn.

That said some very bad things about the man’s own apprenticeship. How much of what pissed him off about Jinn had been victim-shaming for kark caused by Master Dooku?

And what the frip had Dooku done to Komari?

The surrounding minds, buzzing with varying degrees of intoxication and euphoria and lust, were more distracting than the pulsing music, to the point that Sar Labooda, Jedi, kept failing to notice the gyrating bodies surrounding her until she bumped into them. This feels like one of my sister’s ideas.

The discomfort wasn’t enough to make her regret her plan, but it reinforced how wise she’d been to avoid trying this sort of thing while she lived on Coruscant. She would’ve been making her fellow specialists uncomfortable for days afterwards.

How does Depa handle this?

Maybe Sar was underestimating how much alcohol affected the situation? That was one of the few intoxicants her sister wouldn’t touch.

Garen Muln, the pilot-knight who had suggested they go clubbing, frowned at her, grabbed their paid-for drinks off the bar with one hand, and gently guided her to a far corner by a window. The night breeze was faint, just a memory of wind, but it was enough of a distraction to help her focus on the universe outside her head.

“Hey,” Garen said, the lightsaber calluses on his fingers scraping her skin as he brushed her cheek. “You okay?”

“It’s so loud,” she murmured. “So many emotions.”

He froze. “Oh bantha kark. Force telepathy. That’s why you never tried this sort of thing on Coruscant?”

“That, the repercussions as my shields restabilized… I wasn’t willing to unsettle others just to sate my curiosity.”

Garen gave a little laugh, blood rushing to his cheeks to add an appealing ruddiness. “And here I thought you meant your master was still ordering you about as an adult.”

“What? Oh no—I mean, he does express his opinions, but he only expects me to heed work-related orders. Beyond that, there are just the actual, you know, rules of the Halls of Healing. I’m sure Bant’s told you of those.”

She carefully adjusted her vision so she could see… There. She plucked her drink from Garen’s hand and took another sip of froth that tasted like sharp berries and alcohol.

Her focus slipped from holding her vision steady, and it fuzzed right back up.

She couldn’t even function like this. How did others fight while intoxicated? What was she overlooking?

Depa? she sent through the Force. They didn’t always communicate with words, but they were close enough at the moment that any eavesdroppers wouldn’t find a conversation all that odd.

«Sar? Are you drunk?» Depa sounded torn between horror and delight.

I think Garen might kriff me. Wow, she was intoxicated, to admit that to her sister. Depa wasn’t interested in that from anyone, much less Garen, but… Sar squinted at the berry stuff in her glass and reassured, I asked him to. How do you handle crowds?

«…Stop trying to get hurt?»

As if Garen was the type to push or force where he wasn’t wanted. Depa…

Sar felt her little sister’s sigh. «Just stop listening to them.»

“How am I supposed to do that?!”

Lightsaber-callused hands touched her face, again. “Sar? Who are you talking to?”

“Depa,” she muttered, fumbling to grip his shirt, to anchor herself and press her alcohol-numbed lips to his. “I can’t think. Maybe I should stop needing to?”

He shifted so she couldn’t kiss him again. “This wasn’t such a good idea.”

She blearily blinked at him. Was he backing out?

“You got assigned rooms, right?”

“Mm-hm. Some handmaidens…” Oh! He’d need to know: “Careful with Saché. Means well, but going parental, not keeping professional.” And she was very much the sort that was far better at implementing established protocols than at making their own.

Sar finished her drink and passed the glass to a server as Garen helped her out of the club. He stayed ready to steady her, too, as they headed back towards the palace.

“Night stroll on the river! Romantic, right? At least books say it’s romantic.”

He shook his head. “You’re a chatty drunk.”

She peered at him, unable to focus enough to identify why he was feeling uneasy. “Dislike it?”

Garen didn’t answer, but he grabbed her arm as she hopped up on the railing between the bridge and the water below. ”Sar—”

“Unsure I like it,” she commented, wobbling as she tried to step forward. “This is fun, though. Like a tightrope…”

His grip tightened on her arm, stopping her from being able to continue. “Get down or purge the alcohol. Please.”

His breathing was elevated, pupils slightly dilated, but that nuance in his biochemistry meant it was anxiety, not arousal. She let him help her down.

Garen sighed in relief and pulled her close. It felt…strange. Warm and comforting and strange.

«Sar?»

Please go away now.

Depa hesitated, but passed an image of where she was, at breakfast with the Naberries and Tholme and Vos and Kenobi and the child Jinn found before his death.

Sar frowned at the image, specifically one person who was uncharacteristically abashed. What’s up with Quin?

«Something about a bad assumption he made when Jinn was trying to talk to him. Apparently Force ghosts have some trouble communicating with the living, and Quin misunderstood Jinn complaining that he couldn’t understand what was said as Jinn refusing to believe what was said.»

Sloppy of Quinlan, but no one was perfect.

Garen started pulling away.

Sar meeped in protest.

He sighed a little and kept holding her. “Why didn’t you purge the alcohol?”

“Curious,” she mumbled. “Never been drunk before.”

His heartbeat was soothing under her ear, and the companionable warmth was lovely. She pressed closer… Not close enough.

«Sar? …Oh.»

Go away, Depa.

Her fumbling hands managed to get under Garen’s tunic, against his skin. He flinched and pushed them away. “No, not like this. You can be drunk, or you can get laid. We’re not doing both at once.”

Sar froze and thought through what he’d said, making sure she’d understood properly.

Garen sensed the moment Sar chose to take him up on the offer he’d unwisely made.

She closed her eyes, turned the Force into her body, and burned away the alcohol in the space of a few breaths.

He should have expected that.

Her eyes snapped open, and the glint of the nearby street lights reflecting off the water reminded him again of stars.

“Where?” she asked softly.

“Lead the way,” he answered, letting the implicit answer of ‘your room’ buy him time to silence his disquiet. Depa might kill him for this.

“She won’t.”

He flinched. “Sar—“

A touch to his lips cut him off, and strangeness caught his attention. He took her hand from his chin, stroked her fingertips until he figured out what it was: The calluses owned by every other Jedi he’d known were conspicuously absent from her hands. Even Bant had calluses. “You don’t use your lightsaber.”

“Depa builds it,” she said simply, as if that explained why…

…and it did. She was a mind specialist. A lightsaber made by a battle master was not well suited to her at all.

He pressed the skin, but there was nothing. “Have you even passed your lightsaber classes?”

She shook her head. “That’s why I was effectively Temple-bound. I’d be out searching for my nephew, otherwise.”

“Right.” He wished he could offer to go, but…he couldn’t, and searching for a lost child wasn’t his expertise. “I’ll put out the word to my contacts. Maybe he just got lost.”

She accepted his words as the attempted comfort he’d intended, and she led him to her room, to make good on what he’d offered.

Anakin squinted at the Arubesh, trying to follow along as Padmé read aloud from her own copy of the… What had she called it? ‘Primer Regarding Republic Governments’? Something like that.

She’d called it simple, a small introductory booklet she’d had to read at about his age upon joining the Apprentice Legislators, but it still had a lot of words he didn’t know.

At least the data reader let him double-tap to highlight ones he wanted to look up later, and hearing Padmé say the words helped him with ones he understood when speaking but didn’t know how to read.

“‘And thus we have the beauty of the democracy utilized by the Republic: disagreement and diversity exist in unity, for all parties to work together for the common good.’”

…Did he even want to understand all that?

She lowered her data reader. “Any questions?”

He shook his head. “Thanks. Um. So we can look at what Obi-Wan wanted me to study, now?” Anakin didn’t think Obi-Wan would mind that Padmé was being a teacher for him, on stuff she knew about, but… “I’m so behind on Jedi stuff already.”

Padmé flushed a little and cleared her throat. “Politics are important. You’ll need them in the Order, too.”

“Um, yeah… But I kinda need to be able to read Basic, first.”

Her flush deepened, and she stared at the primer. “I read this at your age… Shiraya help me, I’m sorry.” She lifted her chin, face still red. “So what has Obi-Wan suggested for you?”

Anakin couldn’t hide his relief as he pulled up the files.

She eyed them, pursed her lips, and picked the rules of the crèche, muttering something about a Luke and Leia.

Tingles filled Sar even before she awoke enough to realize the warm weight surrounding her wasn’t a blanket.

Sar had expected to understand her sister a little better, after, but this had been so very different from Depa’s own experience.

“Oxytocin,” she murmured. So this was what it felt like to have oxytocin elevated this much. The dopamine and norepinephrine had been pleasant, too.

Garen chuckled against her left clavicle. “Healers.”

She considered his biochemistry. “Were you watching me sleep?”

“Fantasizing about wake-up nookie.” He sat up, his gaze intense with a feeling she understood, now, but he turned away and grabbed his neatly folded clothes off the side table.

“Why didn’t you act on it?”

He paused and glanced at her before pulling on his tunic. “You didn’t consent to that, for one thing.”

She watched him get dressed, appreciating the view but stomach sinking with disappointment. “Was I that bad?”

Garen sighed, fastening his obi. “You invented a mission to interrupt an assignment I had from the Master of the Order. I should’ve headed back already, not hooked up with you.”

He studied her as he straightened his tabards. “Do you want me to visit again sometime?”

Her wishes mattered nothing if his didn’t match. “Do you want to come?”

He leaned forward, brushed his lips against hers. “I’ll visit. No expectations, though. You find who you want, okay?”

And if I’ve already found him?

But no—he wasn’t hers to own, any more than she was his. They’d just borrowed each other for a while.

She managed a goodbye through the Force as he left. She’d be meeting all sorts of new people as she settled in here. Surely she could find someone else to trust enough to help her explore these sorts of relationships.

But I don’t want anyone else, an urge in her brain fired. She traced that to the hormones responsible and adjusted them. Nobody could be hers in that sense, and her body would concede.

That wasn’t the only thing she could adjust, if she wanted.

Sar pressed a finger against her hip, considering her options. She’d long thought someone needed to adjust Master Cho Leem’s methods to illustrate that motherhood and Jedi duties didn’t have to be mutually exclusive. If she succeeded at becoming a Watchman here, she could be that someone.

But…she didn’t know if her self-appointment would work. Not yet.

Pregnancy could theoretically help her case, encouraging the Council to keep her away from Coruscant—but only if Master Windu failed at fast-tracking the assignment. Otherwise, the fast-tracking would be assumed to be caused by the pregnancy, which would backfire on them both.

And Garen had agreed to be a lover. He hadn’t agreed to be a father.

She used the Force to ensure that she wouldn’t conceive, from that night’s activities.

Next time, she thought. Next time, after she was approved as a Watchman, she wouldn’t interfere with the natural process, or maybe she’d even ensure conception. She’d have to think about it. If she wanted to show how silly the Order’s ban on families was, she was going to need to have several children in short order, before her actions were noticed by Coruscant. Garen wouldn’t consent to that. …Would he?

How did non-Jedi handle this?

«What are you doing?»

Sar didn’t think she’d ever gotten such horrified astonishment from her sister, before. “I’m not doing anything. I’m just…thinking. Planning. It was fun.”

Discomfort—Depa’s, not hers—sprouted goosebumps on her skin.

“I think I might like children.”

«Don’t you dare do that to Obi-Wan.»

Sar stared at the wall. Why would she pursue Obi-Wan? She wasn’t his type, and: That’s not someone I expected you to protect.

«He already has one child he doesn’t know about. He doesn’t need more.»

“What?”

«The mother’s keeping him. She needed some help with how to manage Force-using infants.»

“So she called you?”

«She called Siri.»

‘Siri’ being Siri Tachi, who was still a padawan but could slice well enough to avoid tripping alarms…and who wouldn’t have shared someone else’s secret, so Depa had tapped Siri’s comm. Which Siri would’ve been well aware of.

Sar admittedly wasn’t the best at understanding social cues, but… “Your friend group has an odd disregard for boundaries.”

Depa poked her in the brain—a pointed reminder that Sar was one to talk—and mentally scampered off with giggles only partially edged by panic-induced hysteria.

Depa Billaba, Jedi Master, tried so very hard to keep her distress from bothering anyone, even though it made her flee the breakfast table soon after Winnie showed up. Too many people, especially when they were able and willing notice her mood no matter what façade she wore.

The villa was beautiful, just as she’d remembered it, and it was pleasant to explore it without having to fret about a pregnancy or infant or nightmares of…

Her sister’s control slipped, causing Depa to pick more impressions and images than she wanted from anyone. She definitely hadn’t wanted to know her sister…

Dear Force. How did Sar enjoy that?

Another presence wobbled in on their bond, and Depa picked up a distinct sense of embarrassment and apology from Garen.

She hastily shoved them both out before she could pick up anything else.

The snap of fabric caught her ear, a welcome distraction from what was in her head. Depa tracked the sound to Ryoo Thule, briskly changing sheets in a bedroom.

She watched from the hall as the woman replaced the bedding. “Are you expecting more guests?”

“Perhaps,” Ryoo answered without any sign of surprise, so she’d noticed Depa there. “The lord of the family is considering a visit. Best to have it ready, in case he does.”

The older woman finished the room, eyed the results, and returned to the hall. Depa followed her to a large basket of bedclothes.

Ryoo passed a set and led them both to another room that smelled faintly of dust. “Far left corner.”

Depa followed that and the other instructions as she helped freshen that room.

And another.

And another.

And dusted tables.

And washed windows.

And ultimately didn’t realize how long she was spending, helping Ryoo, until Obi-Wan found her.

His smile was tentative. “I’m sorry to trouble you, but are we rescheduling the lessons or did you decide against assisting me with Soresu?”

Depa blinked at Obi-Wan in confusion. Why would he think she’d have changed her mind about teaching him Soresu?

Her surprise distracted her over into her sister’s head, where she caught some plotting that sounded unnervingly analogous to how Depa analyzed people while plotting her own actions.

Oh Force. Just how badly was her sister affected by her, without anyone noticing because Sar had so rarely had opportunity to show it?

She swallowed back the urge to giggle or scream.

Ryoo cleared her throat, drawing her attention back to the conversation…and the light streaming in the window.

It was midday, when she’d told Obi-Wan to meet for lessons in Soresu.

She winced. “I’m sorry, Obi-Wan. I lost track of time.”

Ryoo shoved a rolled-up towel into her arms. “Go wash up.” To Obi-Wan: “I doubt handling a lightsaber would be a good idea for her, right now.”

“I’m not going to hurt Garen!” she protested.

Obi-Wan stared at her. Ryoo just…rolled up more towels.

“Why would you hurt Garen?” Obi-Wan asked.

Embarrassed heat filled her.

“He had sex with her sister,” Ryoo said curtly to Obi-Wan, then addressed her: “Who else are you going to talk to, Jedi? Tholme ran off to the cave Winnie specifically warned him not to visit. The children had to rescue him, and Vos is hauling him back to Coruscant for treatment now.”

How did she know all this? She’d been with Depa all morning.

“Jobal told me,” Ryoo answered, with a tilt of her head. “Paddy’s almost done with lunch, Sola’s writing messages to the ghosts, and Padmé’s trying not to flirt with Anakin while she helps him with his schoolwork, so can you please trust this Jedi enough to get your head together, so I can take my hsuberry instead of watching you for a psychotic break?”

Depa stared at her, and she sensed Obi-Wan doing the same.

If she had to confide in someone…Obi-Wan would be discreet.

“Thank you,” Ryoo said, with blatant relief, and she headed down the hall.

Awkward silence fell.

Depa broke it first. “So that was why Winnie showed up.”

Obi-Wan obviously didn’t follow.

“To get Tholme and Quin out of here. She knew exactly how Tholme would react to being told not to go somewhere.” She frowned. “Not sure why she did that. It won’t stop him from finding out what Sar’s up to.”

«No,» Winnie said, drifting up through the floor, «but it’ll slow him down, and hopefully whatever she’s mad at him for will fizzle by then.»

‘Whatever she’s mad at him for’? “You mean you don’t know?”

«No, I— Excuse me.» And Winnie vanished.

“So convenient for her,” she muttered.

“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan said. Before she could clarify, he continued, “So Sar is your sister, and she slept with Garen?”

He hadn’t known about the family connection? Depa regretted that she hadn’t thought to tell him sooner, but admitted, “Yes, in Theed.” She grabbed the front of his tunic. “And she wants to do it again.”

Obi-Wan caught her hands and gently pried himself free, without letting go. “What part bothers you? Her partner, or the, ah, activity?”

That was a very good question.

“Sar’s always been such a homebody…Garen’s maybe the closest thing she has to a friend outside the Halls of Healing. And she was always fine with that. I mean…she’d think about other things sometimes, but just as curiosity, you know? Just a ‘what if?’, not even an ‘if I could’.

“It’s just really weird and so fast. And this is on top of her suddenly restarting her lightsaber classes a few weeks ago, for some reason. She gave up on those over a decade ago.

“And now she’s getting drunk again and punking me with the side effects. I don’t drink alcohol!”

Chapter Text

Rabé, the eldest of the three young women that Sar had recruited to help her get the Watchman position on Naboo, was watching warily from the corner of her eye as she played her sabacc hand on the floor of the suite the handmaidens had assigned to Sar.

(Since they’d all been awake anyway, it had only seemed reasonable to offer the handmaidens something to do.)

The other one playing, the decoy, picked up a card. Her understandably weak, crude, and frankly infantile mental shield fluttered.

Sar tapped the back of the card that she’d been able to see.

“Gods!” muttered that girl, Sabé. “I’m terrible at this!”

“You’re new at it,” Sar pointed out. “Of course you’re terrible.”

Rabé wrinkled her nose, not commenting, though Sar couldn’t help but overhear, Jedi have really weird ideas of how to be encouraging.

“I bet Eirtaé would be great at this,” Sabé griped.

“Vos probably taught her already.” That quiet voice was Yané, the youngest of the three, who evidently wasn’t an adult yet even by Naboo standards. The couch had been moved against the wall to make room for the game on the floor, and she’d claimed it to study on while the three of them played. She kept her gaze on the massive tome in her lap. “Not Nina, though.”

“Nina?” Sar asked. They hadn’t mentioned that name before.

The cards shifted value, as happened intermittently in sabacc.

“Saché’s cousin. She’s a liaison from CorSec.” Rabé frowned at Yané. “Why do you think that we should include her? I’m not following your reasoning.”

Yané lowered the book enough to peer at them over the top. “Official channels.”

“Oh! Oh!” Sabé blurted. “I win! Yes, I know I just completely messed that up and should’ve stayed calm, but I’ve never won a hand before, and…” She showed her cards, a rare ‘perfect’ play called an Idiot’s Array.

She grabbed the bottle of rum from Sar, took a gulp, and coughed as it went down. “Yuck. I can’t believe we stole this from Eirtaé.”

“I stole it,” Sar corrected. She’d opened it before telling them where it had come from, so they wouldn’t be culpable.

She’d also ordered a replacement, though she hadn’t told them that part; that would defeat the purpose of testing how the allegedly Force-sensitive handmaiden responded to having possessions taken from her. It wasn’t a kind test, but it was an efficient one, and Sar needed a sense of the girl’s priorities and personality before she got far in her lessons from Sentinels, in case she needed to corral something.

Better to nip a problem in the bud than to let it fester into warranting containment in the Citadel, in Sar’s opinion.

“Uh, right,” Sabé said.

Rabé swiftly dealt out another hand. “Yané, you mean that since Nina’s staying professional and not doing anything rogue, we should trust that she’s planning to stay that way and treat her like it?”

Yané nodded.

“I’ll offer to test her shields,” Sar promised. In the very least, it would give her opportunity to confirm Nina’s trustworthiness without being openly rude, particularly if that handmaiden was able to notice an eavesdropper.

The next three hands went to her, again, as most had, and she took the swallow of rum that was the ‘prize’ they were playing for. The last two rounds went to Rabé, and only partially because Sar was going easy on them.

By the time she sent them off to sleep, the three handmaidens still had horrible shielding, but at least they had a solid foundation in what they should be doing. Now they just needed practice.

It was the wee hours of the morning, optimal time for sleeping, but purging the alcohol had given Sar a second wind, herself.

The gardens looked lovely by the light of the moons. She went looking for a door or a path to visit them.

Obi-Wan had been jealous of his agemates, once.

They hadn’t been abandoned in war zones without their lightsabers. They hadn’t been hunted by a Fallen padawan-sibling. They hadn’t had to struggle for their masters to do more than tolerate their company.

They hadn’t had to fight to become a padawan at all.

He’d grown out of the feeling in time, but as he stared the distressed high councilor, he found himself suddenly wondering how much of his jealousy had been based on ignorance of their own struggles.

He had been enslaved as a junior padawan, yes, but as a laborer, like in the deep sea mines of Bandomeer. He’d never had to kill another slave to survive.

He’d never been had a child and then left unaware if they’d even survived, either, and as Depa expressed distress over her sister’s earlier sexual congress and current intoxication, Obi-Wan had the sick feeling that he’d completely misunderstood what Anakin had meant when he’d called her ‘pit-sick’.

“Can you not block Knight Labooda out?” Obi-Wan questioned aloud. He didn’t have many Force bonds, himself, but he could do that much with them.

Master Billaba—Depa, he reminded himself—grimaced. “Not entirely, not unless she cooperates.”

That was…odd. And confusing. “But she’s only a knight?”

Depa frowned in clear confusion. “Of course she’s… Ah. Qui-Gon kept you out of the Temple too much to notice.”

Discomfort twisted Obi-Wan’s stomach, particularly with how he was keeping Anakin from the Temple now.

She stared out the nearby window, expression thoughtful. “Let’s have some tea.”

Paddy remembered the citrus tea Depa liked. The reminder probably would’ve made her uncomfortable, if she hadn’t had Obi-Wan to focus on. Obi-Wan, and things that he frankly should’ve been told years ago.

Depa wanted to include Korkie in what she shared, but…there was reason Satine hadn’t told him. Korkie was…eight? Something like that. A little younger than Anakin.

A little younger than her own child, too. If they were alive.

Depa shivered despite the pleasant warmth of the day. Teacup in hand, she led Obi-Wan from the kitchen, through the dining room, to the nearby balcony. She settled against the railing, letting the steam from the tea soothe her while she countered the physiological effects of intoxication her sister had pranked her with.

Obi-Wan broke the silence first, with a tactful, “Forgive me, I can’t think of any reason why Knight Labooda wouldn’t be able to be a master, not if she has more mastery of Force bonds than you do.”

Well, that made an easy spot for opening this conversation. “Sar doesn’t hold onto her body very well.”

Obi-Wan hid a frown with a sip of tea. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

He didn’t…

Depa set her down her tea before she broke the mug. “Basic side effect of being particularly strong in what we Jedi categorize as the ‘Cosmic Force’?”

Obi-Wan’s expression was more curious than confused, while his aura was the opposite.

What in the galaxy had Qui-Gon been thinking? “You know how a person’s particular talents in the Force affect how they interact with reality?”

“Of course. Like Quinlan with his psychometry—touch gives him another sense for processing the world.”

…That was the crèche-level oversimplification, the foundational framing that later Force theory built on.

“No,” she said gently, choosing words carefully so she didn’t fuel his imposter syndrome. “Like how Quinlan’s psychometry means he has to mind his surroundings like someone with a contact allergy. Or how you have to focus on the here-and-now in combat so visions don’t incapacitate you.”

Obi-Wan frowned. “I’m not that sensitive.”

Depa made herself pause, sip her tea, and scan the horizon for potential threats. Qui-Gon was dead. Thrashing him would require her to resurrect him, and she knew far too much about necromancy to be interested in going down that route even in fantasies.

There also wasn’t any way to explain this without hurting Obi-Wan, so she went direct. “You are that sensitive.”

He didn’t believe her.

She studied the rich golden brown of her tea, ruing that she had to prod this wound. “It showed in the crèche. That’s why your clan had more emphasis on the here-and-now lessons than others did. That works with most visions because they’re anchored on you, specifically, because those originate in your point in the here-and-now. It won’t help visions from external sources that are targeted at you, like from nexuses or mind traps, because those become your here-and-now.”

Obi-Wan blinked at her. “I…did have more visions than usual in my fight with the Sith.”

“To be expected, especially because you evidently haven’t been properly taught about your affinity.” Depa was annoyed at herself for not thinking to double-check this years ago. Qui-Gon probably hadn’t intentionally sabotaged Obi-Wan, but this illustrated why padawans’ education was supposed to be guided by their masters, not limited by them.

She nudged her body into ignoring the usual physiological side effects of frustration. With how anxiety and memories were nipping at her, letting that well wouldn’t be safe for anyone.

She shifted her focus to how to summarize multiple classes in a few sentences. “So we Jedi categorize the Force into different types: Universal, Living, Cosmic, Physical, and such. The categories are conventions, just a model for breaking things down into segments for easier learning, but they also can be useful for broadly categorizing various Force users into ‘affinities’, areas of the Force we’re naturally strong in. Anakin’s so strong in the Force altogether that he probably won’t have a particular affinity, precisely, but that also means he’ll probably have all the downsides. That should balance out some, but it’ll also affect how he interacts with the Force in general.”

Obi-Wan was frowning, but he looked more thoughtful than worried. “Qui-Gon was a master of the Living Force.”

“He was a Jedi Master with an affinity for the Living Force,” she corrected. “If you want to see mastery of the Living Force, visit an AgriCorps chapter house—which is one of many reasons your assignment to Bandomeer at twelve was a travesty, supremely disrespectful to both you and the Jedi Service Corps. Your affinity means you should’ve been guided to the ExploriCorps or EduCorps unless you’d specifically asked for something else.

“Anyway,” Depa continued quickly before he could get the idea that she was suggesting he belonged in the Service Corps. “People strong in the Cosmic Force like Sar usually pass into the Force as children because they perceive reality through the Force first. They have to learn how to pay attention to their bodies and then actively maintain that habit. Even then…”

How to explain what Depa had always known? “You know how reality can get weird around a Force nexus? For people like Sar, that’s how reality is. She has to choose to heed limits like her body.”

“But—” Obi-Wan cut in, then winced.

She gestured for him to continue.

“Does that not mean Knight Labooda has mastery? Because she perceives reality that way yet can engage with the rest of us?”

“Practically speaking, yes,” Depa said outright. “Even her reaching adulthood required mastery of her affinity. But the title of ‘Jedi Master’ is a social convention. Imagine the sort of advice someone like her might give an initiate or senator, and then how much weight they’d give her words if she had the title, without accounting for how she interacts with reality differently than we do.”

Obi-Wan held quiet through a few sips of tea. “That implies she can’t receive the title. Even if she raised a padawan to knighthood.”

“It’s not a firm rule,” Depa clarified. “If she kept herself stable through raising an apprentice and showed no signs of wanting to deviate from that, she’d probably get the title. But people like her rarely care to bother.”

Obi-Wan nodded thoughtfully. “I’m not understanding why this means you need her cooperation to avoid overhearing her.”

“Her body is a convenience,” Depa said outright. “She naturally spreads out from it. So as long as we’re in range of each other, there’s part of her that’s spread along our bond and nestled against my shields where I can’t help but overhear her—unless she pulls back.”

“You don’t share her affinity?”

“No.” If Depa had, neither of them would’ve survived the crèche. “I’m particularly strong in the Physical Force. That gives me a better grip on my body than most, but it has its own downsides.”

Obi-Wan mulled for a few heartbeats. “I’ll need to learn all that for Anakin, then, to be able to help him.”

“Don’t ignore the benefit to yourself,” she pushed. “Classes also aren’t only for padawans. You can continue your education as you like.”

He cast her an odd smile. “Unlike high councilors, I assume?”

What in the galaxy?

“Master Yaddle has at least a dozen doctorates,” Depa said dryly. “Master Yoda stopped bothering after his third century.”

Actually, since Obi-Wan was in Yoda’s lineage, that disrespect for formal education might actually explain how Qui-Gon mishandled Obi-Wan’s. She’d have to watch for an opening to bring that up in a High Council meeting.

Obi-Wan’s eyebrows lifted with surprise. He took his time finishing the rest of his tea. “Not you?”

She cast him a sidelong glance. “Oh, my education isn’t stagnant, either.” Even if her approach and preferred topics of study were best kept to herself. Although… “I’m certified fluent in Huttese.”

“Are you?” Obi-Wan lit up. “Can you recommend a curriculum for me?”

Eirtaé Frizmar, honorary handmaiden to Queen Amidala, sipped her analgesic tisane as she loitered beside the Jedi who’d effectively kidnapped her, both of them waiting for the Jedi that Eirtaé had been supposed to be spending a few weeks learning from.

The Dark Woman scowled at all who dared pass near them in the spaceport, which wasn’t all that busy, despite them being in the capital city for Kiffu, the primary homeworld for the Kiffar.

Evidently Kiffex, the world Jedi Master T’ra Saa was usually stationed on, was basically a prison world. The Kiffu Guardians and the Jedi had a generally amicable relationship, even though the current sheyf for the Kiffar had little fondness for the Jedi. Something about them allegedly stealing her nephew.

(The way the sheyf had intruded on the Dark Woman’s conversation with the traffic controller made Eirtaé seriously doubt her accusations.)

Something caught the Dark Woman’s attention, and she gave a sharp gesture to follow.

Eirtaé obeyed, because she didn’t feel like being assassinated by the Jedi’s former padawan or targeted by a planetary ruler who probably wouldn’t look kindly on someone who had arrived with a Jedi.

The walk didn’t help the headache, but it didn’t worsen it all that much, either.

The Dark Woman ducked to enter a low door, and Eirtaé swiftly followed. The cool, dim room was dominated by a bar, with a scattering of rickety stools and small tables that looked dubiously trustworthy. The lighting probably would’ve helped the headache, if not for the acrid scent of vomit underpinning the room.

“Oi!” snapped the bartender to her. “What do you think you’re bringing in here?”

Eirtaé cast him an unimpressed look and sipped her tisane. “What’s on tap?”

He listed a few options, brands she wasn’t familiar with, but—

“I’ll take the mead.” She slipped into the stool the Dark Woman recommended, across the table from what looked like a sapient tree who’d chosen to mimic mammalian sexual dimorphism.

…That put a rather uncomfortable spin on how Vos had referenced trees and Tholme.

The female-looking tree who was evidently Jedi Master T’ra Saa studied her. “How old are you?”

“She’s Naboo and of age,” the Dark Woman said. “She needs to learn masking. Full camouflage, too, if we can swing it.”

Eirtaé nearly coughed on her sip. That was a shift from the Jedi’s earlier behavior, beyond what could be accounted for by the apology.

Master Saa was studying the Dark Woman. “You want to teach her camouflage?” Subtext: You want to teach a non-Jedi how to hide herself from Jedi?

“Vos introduced me to the concept,” Eirtaé admitted, alerting Saa that the Dark Woman wasn’t the only Jedi who wanted her to learn that.

Saa’s attention turned to her. “Why?”

“Classified,” Eirtaé answered blandly, though her head was starting to pound in time with her pulse.

The two Jedi stared at each other for long enough to be uncomfortable, interrupted only by the bartender slamming a mug of mead in front of Eirtaé and demanding ten credits for it.

“It’s five,” Master Saa corrected, meeting the bartender’s glower with a mild stare. “Anything above that is a tip.”

Eirtaé had to pause to remember what tips were, in this context, and what Billí had told her about them. Tipping culture usually meant underpayment by employers. Financial stress could make someone surly and hypersensitive to the possibility of someone taking advantage of the facilities.

She paid seven credits for her drink.

The bartender’s surprise caught the attention of the Jedi. She ignored their unvoiced queries and sipped the mead. The flavor was harsher than she preferred, definitely mass-produced for quick consumption rather than aged properly, but she wasn’t the biggest fan of mead, anyway. But better that than something with hops in it.

“How did you and Quinlan meet?” Master Saa asked gently.

“Classified,” Eirtaé answered blandly.

The Dark Woman sighed. “Why did Vos introduce you to the concept of camouflage? That’s what T’ra’s looking for.”

Eirtaé set her tisane down, sipped the mead again as she fought to focus through the headache for something convincing but true that wouldn’t get into territory that endangered these Jedi.

“Someone tried to kill my employer recently,” she said finally. “Your Order identified them as a Darksider. The assassination efforts are likely to continue, and I would prefer to avoid their notice.”

Never mind that it was far, far too late to avoid Palpatine noticing her, if it had ever been a possibility in the first place. Preferences didn’t have to be feasible in order to be truth, and that was what mattered when speaking with persons who relied on the Force to alert them of falsehoods.

“You told me you were heir for your house,” the Dark Woman said, because of course she would remember that. “Is it normal for nobility to have employers on your world?”

“At times, yes,” she said curtly—and why in the galaxy were they asking her for a cultural detail that they could easily look up? “Is it normal for you to be so suspicious of someone one of your own people sent to you for aid?”

“Depends on the sender,” Master Saa demurred.

Eirtaé’s scowl was fed as much by that as it was by her headache. “You distrust your own son that much?”

“I have no son.”

She gave the tree a flat look. Yeah, Saa’s sabotage of the sheyf’s efforts to reclaim Vos had nothing to do with how Vos had been the padawan of the Jedi’s lover. Suuure.

Saa smiled.

Quinlan Vos loved his master like a father, but he didn’t always like the man very much, especially when Tholme insisted on being a karking idiot.

The current situation illustrated why, with how he’d had to leave Naboo before he was done there, with his master secured in the ship medbay and a comm open to the Halls of Healing.

On the other side of the holo call, even Bant Eerin looked confused by this screwup, and healers like her saw Jedi stupidity on a regular basis. “His witch friend warned him to take her kid with him if he wanted to visit somewhere, so he went alone, and he got himself possessed?”

Bant had taken the call in a private room, so Quinlan could admit, “There might’ve been blood magic involved.”

“Possessed?” she repeated flatly.

Yes, Tholme knew better and was very good at preventing that. It made Quinlan wonder if Winnie had maybe helped the possession happen (she’d obviously wanted to distract Tholme from something), but no good could come of admitting that possibility.

“We got him into a healing trance,” he said instead—and if that ‘we’ included some Naboo civilians and not other Jedi on Naboo right now, Bant didn’t need to know that.

“Did you get the extra spirit out?”

Had they? Ruwee and Jobal had said they thought so. “Uncertain. I haven’t picked up any activity outside the healing trance.”

“But if the spirit’s familiar with the concept, it could just be biding its time.” Bant sighed. “Enter the Halls of Healing through the lower entrance, and— You know the drill. I’ll have isolation ready.”

“Thanks, Eerin.” He shut down the message and noticed a new one in his inbox, from Master Kuro. Odd. He opened it.

…and sighed heavily at the message signed by Frizmar, who had obviously ‘borrowed’ Master Kuro’s comm. Which she most definitely should not have been able to do.

At least Frizmar had made contact with Master Saa, but times like this made Quinlan despair at how, by Order standards, Tholme was particularly competent.

Chapter Text

The stylus slipped through Qui-Gon’s hand again. He scowled and fumbled in his efforts to pick it back up, only managing to knock it from the table.

Sola Naberrie grabbed it for him, with a smile in his general direction. She couldn’t hear or see him at all, though he could sense her trying to.

Thus why he was struggling with the stylus, since the only way he could communicate with her was through writing. Her data reader had a touch pad, and his fingers couldn’t activate it, but as long as he could manage to grip the stylus…

But he was only able to write in short spurts. Maybe focusing on key phrases would be better?

With that in mind, he carefully managed to write visions before he dropped the stylus again.

Sola glanced at the reader, then shook her head as she fetched the stylus from the floor. “Something replaced my little sister’s self when she was eight. Visions don’t do that. Time travel from a future self, though? Which also explains the sorts of things she knows versus doesn’t?”

She nibbled on some crackers while he worked through writing No such thing.

Sola rolled her eyes. “Isn’t your entire ghost thing right now something you didn’t think possible?”

Qui-Gon blinked in surprise. That was true. But he’d at least heard of ghosts, as a silly story in the crèche. Time travel, though?

“I guess I just don’t get why you have no problem believing she had really weird visions that showed her the next however many years, in detail, but her mind getting replaced by an older version of her is just too much.”

If she’d been able to hear him, Qui-Gon would’ve immediately countered that it was just unbelievable, not ‘too much’, but he had to fumble with the stylus to try to write…

And by the time he managed to get the thought on the page a few minutes later, he was slowing, pausing, and realizing she might just have a point.

Classes were annoying.

Aayla already knew how to check, fire, and reload a blaster—and what to look out for, to catch the foibles in different models. Did she really need to know what the parts were called? Criminals cared more about the practical knowledge, anyway.

…Okay, some criminals did.

So did Aayla, for that matter. She didn’t even have guesses for half the questions.

Shadows valued being able to recognize limits and own the consequences. She couldn’t possibly pass, so she needed a new goal for this exam.

She frowned at the flimsy. The time needed for studying and retaking the exams was going to keep her from looking into whatever was up with Binks, more, too. She couldn’t do much on Coruscant, but she could at least start digging into hsuberry.

But that was something to focus on later. Right now…

Aayla switched goals to making the teacher smile, and she labeled the rod with gimer.

Master Obi-Wan wanted to learn Huttese.

Anakin tried to focus on reading the assigned booklet about how schooling even worked in the Jedi Order, not on the conversation happening on the nearby balcony, but it was hard. Padmé didn’t even seem to notice Masters Obi-Wan and Depa nearby, but something about her had been feeling weird all morning. He wasn’t sure how to describe it—‘distant’ wasn’t the right word…

It was reminding Anakin of market sickness, really, except Padmé was used to whatever terrible things she’d survived before he’d murdered her. She was so used to that past that she wasn’t seeing her present very well.

Had she even noticed the Jedi who stopped by briefly to pick up his ship from Master Depa? Anakin wasn’t sure. That Jedi had said hi to Padmé’s parents, friendly enough that he’d already known them, and tracked down Obi-Wan to give him and Anakin some candies in congratulations for the new apprenticeship.

Caramels, he’d said. Master Garen had called it a tradition of his lineage. He’d promised to help Anakin find what types of candy he really liked, once they were all back on Coruscant and Anakin, so he could do it right after Anakin got caught up to being a junior padawan.

It was all so confusing. At least the communication messes that kept happening here were showing that it was normal even among people who’d been born Free.

Confusion still felt unsafe, but Anakin could see that it wasn’t unusual. He’d get used to it. Questions were safe, now, and not because how much he was worth to his owner.

He took a deep, slow breath, like the pamphlet he’d been sent with some self-calming tactics. In for a count of three, out for a count of five…

Even the conversation between Masters Obi-Wan and Depa on the balcony showed how normal it was to have things you didn’t know. Anakin clung to that, focusing on how Master Depa was explaining, not judging.

Not judging Obi-Wan, anyway. Her tone had a sharpness to it in regards to Masters Qui-Gon and Yoda—not quite dislike or distaste, but definitely annoyed.

But evidently even Jedi who grew up in the Temple saw the Force differently from each other, and Master Qui-Gon missed some details when teaching Master Obi-Wan.

That helped explain why Jedi were supposed to have multiple teachers. It meant Master Quinlan had told the truth, too, that Obi-Wan was his primary teacher, not his only one.

But…Master Depa also spoke of learning as something that people just did—even after they were all grown up, even if they knew a lot and were in charge of others.

The booklet said all sorts of things that Anakin assumed would’ve been less strange if he’d been born Free. Like, it said kids’ rights included the right to pick some of their own classes, and to request a different approach or teacher if a core class just wasn’t making sense to them. Kids had rights?

Anakin chewed his lip and opened a fresh file for him to track his questions, so he could remember to ask when he got up the nerve.

Right now, he used what bravery he had to sign up for a Huttese placement test, so he could take classes on that when he returned to the Temple.

They weren’t supposed to be at Varykino.

The knowledge nipped at Padmé’s nerves, prickling along her spine, even while she stayed at the table with Anakin, so he had someone available to ask questions regarding his schoolwork. Even though her own education had been very different from his. As she’d illustrated upon reading him an essay she’d read as his age.

With how badly he’d misunderstood politics Before, he would need the essay in the future, but right now, it was too advanced for him.

He’d turned to focusing on an introductory packet from the Jedi Order’s EduCorps, explaining their approach and the core subjects that students needed to learn for general education. The options on the list were bewildering to Padmé, who was used to Naboo’s system of tiered education packets.

In both Naboo and the Jedi Order, education was modularized without age restrictions. A six-year-old could be learning algebra, if they wanted to and passed the previous modules before then. Or a sixteen-year-old could take five years on an algebra module, if they needed it.

Both systems had conventions for what age students usually had particular classes, but those were just common, not required. Both had core requirements for graduation, and other requirements for various study tracks.

Both even used merit as a metric for determining adulthood, though the implementation was very different. The Naboo adulthood tended to earlier than Republic standard and was very much a legal status. A Jedi came of age upon their knighting, but that was more of a social emancipation than a legal one, like when she’d gone from Apprentice Legislator to governor of Theed for a year before her election as queen.

Something about that felt uncomfortable.

And that was before Padmé checked her accounts and found the update from Sabé. She’d expected the Jedi to pay more attention to her, but not as a permanent ambassador from their Order.

She also hadn’t expected Sabé, Rabé, and Yané to specifically request Knight Labooda for such a position, nor for Knight Labooda to ask them to request her. What had happened?

Sabé also mentioned that Eirtaé wasn’t even on Naboo, right now. Where? None of the others knew. Padmé’s mind raced through the changes she’d made since Before, like the visit to Kamino, and she prayed to Shiraya that she hadn’t gotten Eirtaé killed.

Motion caught her eye as someone swept flimsy aside to set a pitcher and a platter of crackers and toppings on the table.

Grandma plucked the data reader from Padmé’s limp fingers without looking at it. “Eat so you have the strength to seek resolutions rather than fret uselessly.”

“It’s not… There’s nothing to resolve,” she fumbled, feeling unmoored and uncertain how to get her footing back. “I just don’t understand what’s going on. I can’t imagine why Knight Labooda would’ve asked to be requested as Jedi Watchman here.”

Grandma paused. “That’s the girl who noticed you as a toddler, isn’t it?”

“Good memory,” Master Billaba said from the nearby balcony, nibbling on a handful of crackers. Obi-Wan was discreetly sipping tea beside her. When did they get there?

“She’s memorable,” Grandma replied to the high councilor. “Particularly when she doesn’t bother to hide her…you Jedi call it ‘affinity’, I believe.”

“That’s our framing, though we don’t necessarily use that term,” Master Billaba acknowledged. “She’s always been drawn to ghosts.”

Anakin dropped the cup he was in the middle of picking up, spilling his beverage over the table. “I’m so sorry!”

“It’s fine,” Grandma said. “Water is plentiful here.”

He grabbed the dish towel she passed him and set about cleaning it up, with anxiety-driven speed that didn’t sacrifice thoroughness.

Master Billaba continued, “It made for some awkward times in the crèche, particularly because nobody believed the Sith ghost was drawing us there after she rescued Sar from a trap.”

Padmé blinked at her in surprise.

Obi-Wan delicately cleared his throat. “There’s a Sith ghost in the Temple?”

“Possibly. It might just be a particularly well-made holochron.” Master Billaba casually sipped her tea and added, as if in explanation, “Sar had to learn to notice locks.”

Grandma nodded as if that made sense. “Did the holochron not realize you two were Jedi?”

The discreet sly amusement in Master Billaba’s expression reminded Padmé very much of Obi-Wan during the war. “It knew. The template had been a child soldier, herself, and was furious that we could get into the restricted archives.”

Padmé made herself take a handful of cheese cubes from the platter. She nibbled on a chunk of feta. “What does Knight Labooda being drawn to ghosts have to do with you meeting her, Grandma?”

“While her master was chatting with your parents about the possibility of sending you to the Jedi, she wandered off into Old Theed,” Grandma answered, accepting the towel back from Anakin. “Winnie wasn’t available—”

“I’d nearly killed her,” Master Billaba interjected. “Lightsaber to the gut. She startled me, then apologized for assuming I was on the investigator track like Quin.”

Obi-Wan blurted, “You were startled and went for a slice to the torso?”

She side-eyed him consideringly, then shrugged. “You get missions where taking a limb can work as a wake-up call. I get ones where taking a limb would just teach the threat to be more discriminating in its targets.”

Padmé stared. That fit with how Master Billaba had tested her, back in Theed, but…that suggested killing was an expected part of Billaba’s specialty.

Even Obi-Wan was staring at her, teacup unmoving in his hand.

Anakin, though, just crunched some crackers. “So Master Obi-Wan deals with people who put chains on others because it’s easy and comfortable. You deal with people who put chains on others because they want to.”

“Usually,” Master Billaba clarified. “It’s a rule of thumb, an oversimplification.”

Anakin nodded, eating a bit more. “So Jedi Vos…figures out what type people are, so the Jedi know if they should send you or Master Obi-Wan?”

That was an interesting way of framing it, but something about Anakin’s approach made Padmé uneasy. “Master Vos deals with people, too.”

“Not the same way, though,” he said thoughtfully. “He’s a Trickster.”

Padmé could feel the weight behind the description, even though she didn’t understand the import. “What’s that mean?”

“He tricks abusers into thinking he sides with them so he can get help to the victims,” Master Billaba answered quietly. “It’s a particularly dangerous and difficult specialty.”

Anakin slouched, shoulders tight, as he muttered, “I still don’t like him.”

‘Still’? Padmé turned her confused stare onto him. “Whyever not?”

“Quin’s a manipulator who pushes buttons on purpose,” Master Billaba replied on his behalf.

Obi-Wan interjected, “Quin only does that when he has good reason.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “which is why we’re fine with him, but many people don’t want to deal with the type, for whatever reason. And that’s equally valid.”

Grandma refilled Anakin’s water. “Judging from when I met Jedi Labooda as a padawan, she has similar expertise.”

Padmé didn’t understand. “What do you mean? She’s a mind healer.”

“Mind healers specialize,” Grandma said dryly. “Jedi Labooda has an unusual specialty within the field.”

Master Billaba swallowed the cube of sharp cheese she’d popped into her mouth and cast Grandma a grin. “I’m gonna borrow that one.”

…What in the galaxy was Knight Labooda’s specialty?

Jedi Master Mace Windu had definitely been surprised by how Sar requested her appointment to Naboo, particularly with how quickly she’d gotten a few of the queen’s handmaidens to cooperate. He’d made a mental note that apparently she was better at negotiation than her record suggested, used his authority as Master of the Order to approve the request, and continued with his day.

Now, he was wondering what the kark he’d missed, because he hadn’t seen Feemor this worried since his brother padawan went out of contact in Mandalorian space for the better part of a year. He’d been Qui-Gon’s first padawan, after his first master’d died.

The knight had intercepted Mace in the hallway outside his quarters, too, even going so far as to remove his mask for the conversation in clear alert that he was speaking for himself, not the Temple Guard.

“They asked for her?” Feemor asked, as if there were something odd in that.

“Yes,” Mace reiterated, to be clear. “What’s the problem?”

The quiet as the younger knight considered how to phrase his answer was standard for him, so there was nothing concerning in that. Just uncomfortable.

“There’s no problem,” Feemor said finally. “I’m just surprised.”

“Kriff that. You’re shocked. What’s the problem with Labooda?”

Feemor rubbed the bridge of his nose. “There’s no problem,” he repeated carefully. “It’s just… It’s good that they asked for her. She wouldn’t have let them do that if it were likely to result in a diplomatic incident.”

Wouldn’t have let them? “I didn’t know she had sufficient skill with slicing to intercept messages.”

Feemor winced, looked away. “She doesn’t.”

The knight put his mask back on and left before Mace could push further.

Standing in that hall, Mace decided that if there was a problem with Knight Labooda taking an assignment from the High Council, he’d find out soon enough from the Master of Shadows.

The night was quiet, not empty, so Sar didn’t think anything of the quiet presence approaching until she heard the scuff of metal on metal.

She cast her awareness out. Single person, basically male. Calm and professional—annoyed and unhappy, certainly, but not the type to pressure others feel the same emotions he did. Perfectly comfortable company.

As a polite acknowledgment of his presence, she carefully turned towards the sound, enough to actually see the Mando’adMandalorian (Mando’a) in full beskar’gamarmor, hard shell (Mando’a). She then turned back to the bush she’d been eying and touched one of its flowers. “I can never remember which of the mourning colors is for battlefield deaths.”

Confusion filled the Mando’s aura. After the few seconds needed to look up the answer, he said, “Purple,” his voice distorted by the helmet.

“Thank you.” With that shimmer by the light of the moons, these petals would be beautiful on a salad. Were they edible?

He continued to study her, puzzled. “You aren’t Billaba.”

No, she wasn’t, but his tracking equipment had apparently ‘caught’ on her as close enough. It was a simple downside to the most efficient tracker programs: they could ‘catch’ relatives and doppelgängers instead of your target. The more accurate ones were too slow to keep up with a moving target.

She asked aloud, “Why are you hunting Master Billaba?”

He didn’t answer, even his mind holding still with a sniper’s readiness.

“Has she earned a bounty?” It wouldn’t be the first time.

“No.” He paused, giving her room to respond, before he continued, “It isn’t a blood debt.”

Sar sensed the truth in that. “Do you plan her harm?”

Suspicion spiked in his aura, but it didn’t show in his voice as he admitted, “No.”

That thought was incomplete. She waited for him to finish it, wishing she’d thought to bring a data reader and scanner with her on her walk. That would’ve made it so much easier for her to identify the plants here and look them up, to find out more about them.

“I’ll fight her for the trophy back,” the Mando added, “but I don’t intend to hurt her beyond that.”

Trophy back? There was no harm, then, in admitting, “She’s in the Lake Country.”

Surprise flickered from him. “And why should I believe you?”

She shrugged. “You’re the one who knows your own priorities.” She could check, of course, to find why this Mando ‘should’ believe her by his own reasoning, but he hadn’t given her cause for that.

“…Why are you telling me this?”

Sar plucked a petal from the mourning purple flower and touched it with her tongue. The Force flared in warning—poisonous—and she spat it out. “You’ve fought my sister, and she didn’t kill you.”

Jango Fett stared at the jetiiJedi person (Mando’a) in front of him as she plucked a petal from a second flower and tasted it. Was she touched in the head?

After a pause, she chewed, looking thoughtful. Swallowed. Glanced his way. “Edible. Bit peppery. Want one?”

He didn’t respond. How did his recognition software find this jetiiJedi person (Mando’a) when looking for Billaba? The trip to Naboo was supposed to be just a quick hop to recover his bes’bevMandalorian flute that’s also a weapon, something to complete before his masters knew he’d left Kamino again.

She wordlessly accepted his silence as a no and turned away.

Jango carefully reached for a dagger, but she didn’t tense at all. She seemed genuinely oblivious to what his beskar’gamarmor, hard shell (Mando’a) even meant.

What was the word Tachi had used for the more academic, cerebral jetiiJedi person (Mando’a) who mostly stayed at the Temple? “What’s a consular doing in the field?”

“Depends on the consular,” she commented, then eyed him with a slight frown. “I didn’t know Mandalorians knew that much about Jedi.”

She did understand his armor, then.

Still casual, as if making small talk about the weather, the jetiiJedi person (Mando’a) asked, “Do you think the Darksider killed here was a Sith?”

And she knew Mandalorians historically—traditionally—sided with Sith.

She also detoured to taste a leaf.

He stared at her in disbelief. “You know I could kill you?”

“Of course you could,” she replied, as casual as if they were chatting about the weather. “But you’re merely confused, not hostile or calculating.” She stilled. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to—”

She shook her head, muttering “And I’m still doing it,” as she turned her attention back to the plants.

“You’re that confident in your abilities?” Why did the jetiiseJedi persons (Mando’a) keep members like this in the Temple? Someone this adept at reading people could’ve prevented Galidraan entirely.

“Galidraan?” she murmured, then said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

…So that was why they kept this type in-Temple. Uneasiness and anxiety at what precisely she might be picking up from his mind warred with regret and frustration at the lives someone like her could have saved.

“I do apologize. We Jedi treat reading auras and sometimes listening to surface thoughts as part of standard communication. I’ve only just arrived here from the Temple, and I’m still adapting my habits.”

‘Sometimes’ meaning ‘consulars’? Or no—if Councilor Gallia did this kark, there would’ve been rumors. Only some consulars, then. Maybe specific subtypes, within the category?

She went back to the first flower she’d eaten from and plucked the whole blossom from the vine. “If you’ll allow me to make amends for my rudeness, I can do more than tell you where my sister is.”

Jango watched her carefully. With her admitted mental abilities, she’d surely picked up some of her sibling’s talent for combat.

She ate another petal off the flower she’d picked. “I’ll take you.”

Chapter Text

Ryoo had overcooked latemeal’s casserole a bit. It tasted fine, just was a bit crispier than it was supposed to be.

Jobal poked her serving with a frown but didn’t comment, heeding the warning behind Ruwee’s soft smile. Sola took her plate and went back upstairs to keep chatting with the dead Jedi. Padmé…

Ryoo gently moved Padawan Skywalker’s cup away from Padmé’s elbow, before she bumped it again. Padmé was too focused on her data reader to notice, setting things up to go back to Theed tomorrow. She kept muttering things like, “That wasn’t supposed to happen” and something about an Eirtaé.

Padawan Skywalker himself was eating quietly, with worried glances dancing between Padmé and the two Jedi who remained here at the moment. Ryoo topped his plate back up and accidentally knocked over a nearby teacup from the earlier snack.

Master Billaba caught the cup with the Force, without looking away from her own data reader or pausing whatever she was writing. She finished that, set the stylus down, then returned the cup back to the table with her hand before resuming her note-making.

Knight Kenobi frowned. “I’m surprised you switched methods.”

“I’m… ’Clumsy’ isn’t really the right word. Heavy? Rough? I might’ve broken it, otherwise.” Master Billaba’s aura ran thick with calculating thought, and she tapped the data reader. “Is there a reason you’re not running this by Master Dagwa?”

Knight Kenobi blinked at her. “I beg your pardon?”

“Sar’s master? Spotting education gaps is part of his expertise.” Master Billaba caught the same confusion Ryoo did, and elaborated, “Mrlssi, about hip tall, head and chin feathers starting to green with age, tends to stick to the shadows?”

The last bit was casually said, but it explained why Master Billaba had hesitated to bring it up. Knight Kenobi’s comfort with Knight Vos didn’t mean he’d be comfortable expanding his social circles to include more like them.

Ryoo herself didn’t mind such people, but that only meant she could enjoy their company in limited quantity. She preferred her trees.

She almost didn’t comment, but…this group was young enough that they might need it mentioned. “Might it it not be better if Padawan Skywalker’s schedule is checked by an Educator-Knight in his intended field?”

Master Billaba sipped her water. “If he were a senior padawan with a niche specialty, possibly, but at this point? Not really. Master Dagwa had to spot gaps in fundamentals for Sar. He even established the algorithm that watches a person’s balance of academic versus applied education and flags accounts that go too far one way or the other.”

That sounded generally useful but occasionally problematic. Ryoo wondered how that worked for students who needed emphasis on one form over the other, like Labooda herself.

“The flag’s just an alert to double-check a file’s imbalance has due reason,” Master Billaba continued. “And it sticks to public record, so there are limits to it. For example, it flagged Sar as in-Temple far more often than she actually was.”

Knight Kenobi paused, stretched a little, and asked lightly, “I thought she was Temple-bound?”

Master Billaba barked a laugh. “Absolutely not. She left it rarely, sure, but that frankly has more to do with how her missions usually fall into territory that I lack the clearance to know about even now.”

It was a pity Padmé was too distracted to realize the heads-up she was being handed: Naboo’s new Watchman didn’t answer to the High Council. Since she wasn’t Service Corps, that meant she was Jedi Intelligence. Considering how she’d arranged the situation to end up with the position, judicious social manipulation was part of her expertise. Probably as some sort of analyst.

Padawan Skywalker’s shoulders tightened. “But you’re a high councilor.”

“Yep,” Master Billaba said—and Ryoo hadn’t realized that. Councilor Billaba, then. “I’m a politician.”

It was said sardonically, with annoyance, but from what Ryoo understood, it wasn’t exactly wrong.

Ruwee himself explained, “The Jedi have a few councils, with different jurisdictions. The High Council is like…the Senate as a whole, with other councils and bodies having their own niches, like how the Senate affects Judicial but Judicial has things it does without the Senate’s knowledge or say-so.”

Knight Kenobi paused in the middle of taking a bite. “You learned that from Garen?”

Ruwee shrugged, not so much as glancing Ryoo’s way. “And his master, among some others.”

Confusion furrowed Knight Kenobi’s brow. “When did you find out Garen was your brother?”

“From our mother’s pregnancy,” Ruwee said dryly. “I am older. My mother herself had a younger sister who was given to the Jedi, though they didn’t stay in touch.”

Old habit had wrapped Ryoo like a familiar shawl, and she didn’t so much as twitch.

Wialu’s master had been horrible enough that she’d intentionally stayed until she’d been offered knighthood, then left the Jedi and joined a pacifist cult. Winnie had viewed that precedent from her past life as reason to not bother to get to know her sister. Ryoo had viewed it as reason to meet Lulu and her friends early, to ensure they had friendly contacts outside the Order. She’d had to cut contact with Tholme for Jobal’s safety, but the others…

Well, they were the sorts that respected boundaries, even Lulu’s refusal to stay in contact with them after she’d left the Order. They and Lulu sometimes used Ryoo to pass a message one way or the other, but neither side ever sought anything past what was volunteered.

Lulu would be concerned about the Jedi interest in Padmé, but Ryoo doubted she’d care enough to intercede unless the Dark Woman showed up and started kicking children around. Even then, she’d probably pursue legal retaliation rather than deal with her erstwhile master, herself.

Councilor Billaba tapped the table in front of Padawan Skywalker. “You know ‘sleep’, ‘freedom’, and ‘death’ are entirely different things in Basic, right?”

“Um,” Padawan Skywalker said. “Yes. Thanks.”

Padmé frowned. “Why wouldn’t he know that? They’re different in Huttese, too.”

“Not always,” Councilor Billaba said evenly, side-eying Padawan Skywalker.

“Freedom in sleep,” the boy muttered in slave creole, and the high councilor answered “Precisely” in the same language.

The language was secret, kept to slaves and their cousins who sought to free them, and the others weren’t involved in that. Ryoo asked, “Should you be speaking that here?”

Padawan Skywalker tensed. “You know it?”

“Just a little.” She topped up Knight Kenobi’s juice cup. “As befits a cousin.”

Padawan Skywalker perked up. “Sabé wants to be a cousin.”

Ryoo would have to contact her, ensure she understood what the freedom trail entailed.

“What do you mean?” Padmé asked.

Padawan Skywalker squirmed. ”Um.”

“It’s figurative,” Ryoo answered for him. “One of things that if you need to understand, you already will.”

Padmé stared at her.

Helping Winnie rescue Lulu and a few others from Zygerria had been horrible, even with how Ryoo had discreetly stayed in the audience while distracting the brezaks. She was far more comfortable coming up with recipes for Force suppressants that escaped Force-sensitives could wean off of more easily and safely than the collar or drugs.

Councillor Billaba ignored that segue and continued to the other Jedi: “Remember that Master Yoda’s fond of speaking in oversimplified absolutes that are intended to make a point, rather than be taken literally. If you’re looking for a thorough or concrete answer for something, ask an archivist like Master Nu. If they shut you down, then you don’t have clearance to know the answer.”

She glanced over her data reader again. “Obi-Wan, I’ll walk you through some foundation for soresu tonight, and then we can continue over holocall until you’re back in-Temple. And you don’t have to be dependent on me for that—the EduCorps has curriculum resources for all sorts of things. That’s how I picked up Senate etiquette after I got appointed to the High Council last year.”

Councilor Billaba really was trying hard to make sure the other Jedi had a good foundation to build on after she left.

Councilor Billaba also Force-pulled one of the tarts that had been left on the mantel due to their particular filling. She took a bite before Ryoo could intervene.

“Mmm, hsuberry,” the Jedi said. “Not fond of the petals, myself, but Sar will love these.” She frowned thoughtfully. “In the interest of full disclosure, she was Tra’cor Clan in the crèche.”

Judging from the confusion in Knight Kenobi’s aura, he didn’t understand the significance of that, either, but he didn’t ask, and it was none of Ryoo’s business.

A familiar Force signature prodded Quinlan from across the cafeteria. He sent a return hello as he finished balancing a rye roll atop the seed sticks.

Eeth Koth hadn’t been the one who noticed Quinlan was in classes too advanced for his age, but he’d believed his crèche-sibling when she quietly pointed it out.

Luminara Unduli herself hadn’t cared to find out why the incongruity existed. She was perfectly content being aware that something was off without feeling any need to know what was going on—but she was the quiet, observant sort. It altogether suited to her specialty of diplomat for people who truly wanted to move forward but needed some help identifying and addressing past wounds before they could.

Luminara’s particular personality also meant she tended to see through masks but preferred minding her own business. She’d learned to make use of natural meddlers, though, like when someone in a few of their classes was even younger than their crèche clan’s tag-along and definitely needed support from others close to him academically.

Which was ultimately why Quinlan had ended up taken in by Tra’cor Clan, named for a highly aggressive and dangerous amphibious cousin of rancors that was prone to tricking its prey and was extremely vulnerable if outside its proper environment. Quin had never figured out why Eeth and Luminara were in that one, but then they might’ve been case examples of how warning signs were alerts of possibility rather than declarations of actuality.

Or maybe it was just decided that those two would particularly benefit from the clan. Lumi had needed to learn that sometimes meddling was necessary, and Eeth had needed to learn that sometimes meddling was foolish. Even Shylar had handed them both opportunities to learn that, and Sar…

Sar illustrated why the clan existed.

She was also why Shylar had thoroughly noped out of exploring her own affinity for the Cosmic Force, even though it was much lighter than Sar’s. Shy had even chosen to specialize in some things that she could only ever be mediocre in, specifically because of how they sabotaged her vulnerabilities.

Common knowledge in the Order was that clan assignments were arbitrary, but that—like most common knowledge—was incorrect. The crèche clans were symbolized by various creatures for good reason, and the masters in charge of assigning children tried to pick a good fit for the child.

Quinlan had been in Bergruutfa Clan, named for a large, mild-mannered grazing beast that was preyed on while young and had a strong protective streak. Their crèchemaster had encouraged them to make sure to take care of themselves, too, and members of their clan usually went into the Jedi Service Corps and-or the Shadows.

But that protective streak meant they’d also kept an eye on Boma Clan, known for its aggression and therefore bullies. Poor Obi-Wan’s affinity for the Universal Force had made him unusual for that clan and therefore a popular target, and there was only so much that could be done about it. Knowing someone was being unfairly targeted was very different from being able to prove it.

Another ping in the Force alerted Quinlan a few heartbeats before a familiar green arm fell around his shoulders. Kit Fisto had been one of the only junior padawans to notice that the initiate in their classes actually was a padawan, not just academically advanced, and he’d kept an eye out for such edge cases since. Thus why the newly-knighted Kit had approached Bant with an offer to apprentice her, after she’d been orphaned by Master Tahl’s death.

New knights usually only took an apprentice if it was someone they’d Found and bonded with, like Quin had with Aayla. And even that sort of arrangement had a fair number of people arguing that such bonds between persons so close in age indicated Force-approved padawan-siblings, not master-padawan pairings.

Kit cheerfully ignored naysayers in general, and his head-tresses flicked a casual ‘kriff yourself’ to any judgmental observers as he maneuvered Quinlan across the cafeteria to join Eeth’s table. Luminara even offered her seat, her Mirialan robes and headdress fluttering as she took to her feet and stepped aside with a dancer’s grace.

Eeth himself was grinning, showcasing the sharp teeth characteristic of Zabraks, accented by the vestigial horns. His brown skin was a bit darker than Quin’s at the moment, so he too had been somewhere with lots of sun, of late.

“Well?” Eeth asked as Quinlan sat down.

“‘Well’ what?” Quin retorted, and he took a pointed bite of the vegetable curry. Wrangling his erstwhile master to the healers had cost him lunch and possibly dinner, by Naboo time, so breakfast was long gone.

Luminara’s own food tray was empty except for a single rye roll, probably because she wouldn’t have grabbed it if she’d noticed the grain used. She dropped that on Quinlan’s plate. “Rumor is that a Sith killed Master Jinn.”

Quin chewed on autopilot, surprised that Lumi was the one to broach that conversation. “What are you all wanting me to confirm, exactly?”

“What do the Shadows think of the rumor?” Eeth pushed—and that was more characteristic of this lot.

But then Lumi added, “Are you thinking that it’s a new Sith cult, or that it’s the same Sith Order as before, just out of long hiding?”

Those were two very different questions. Quin finished chewing his bite, swallowed, then cast Kit a thoughtful look as he sipped some water. Lumi and Eeth did tend to tag-team when meddling, because they balanced each other, but why was Kit involved?

The Nautolan lifted his hands in a mockery of surrender and innocence. “Sar says the Naboo asked for her to be Watchman.”

Quinlan choked on his drink.

Okay, so Lumi’s push made a bit more sense, now. She sometimes helped patch up prisoners before they could go on to their imprisonment in the Citadel. And Sar always told her crèche-siblings more than she was supposed to, anyway, since they trusted her to geas them.

Tra’cor Clan tended to be very much like the Shadows in how they interacted with each other, for all that they rarely ended up in that branch of the Jedi. Even Sar wasn’t, with reason, though she usually worked with the Shadows.

Had worked. She was a Watchman now, which was…kinda terrifying, actually.

At least she was the self-aware sort? She was politically savvy, too, enough that she wouldn’t have pushed for the position if she didn’t calculate herself capable—and that she wouldn’t do anything stupid if he was right about the chancellor, because that would be outside her jurisdiction.

Sar had been karking terrifying before she’d learned to respect boundaries like that.

“She said someone in the queen’s retinue has visions,” Kit continued, drawing Quinlan’s focus back to the conversation. “Now, I realize there’s a lot I don’t know about her, but why the kark would she care about that?”

Sar had noticed how to muck with biochemistry while in the crèche, long before any of the adults had thought to warn her about the side effects. That had its own repercussions for her.

Quinlan considered what he could admit safely that would let them fill in some gaps. Sure, Sar probably didn’t know yet, but she’d figure it out soon enough. “My bet is on same Sith Order, with the dead one being the apprentice and the master being in the Senate.”

Kit’s head-tresses fluttered with interest. “Tera’s running the pool?”

“Taria,” he corrected, and the difference meant the betting was only open to Shadows.

The slight slump was disappointment, promptly tossed aside because Kit was ruthlessly optimistic. The result fascinated Sar, in the way that caused her crèche-siblings to sit on her even if they had to yank her down by her hair. Which they’d done a few times when she’d peeked at Kit’s biochemistry.

Sar was free to kark up her own biochemistry all she liked. Everyone else’s was their own property.

“‘The Senate’ is a specific location,” Lumi observed.

Eeth grabbed that to push, “You suspect someone in particular?”

As if Quinlan could answer that safely. He ate the roll from Luminara.

Eeth growled in protest at being ignored.

Kit elbowed the Zabrak. “Mind if we start our own pool?”

Quin eyed the Nautolan. “Most Jedi believe the Sith are extinct for good reason, Fisto.”

Lumi stole a seed stick from his plate. “Is it good reason? How many of our missing were quietly picked off by a Sith because we assumed they were gone?”

That was a point, but—

“Darsha and Master Bondara both died in the pickup what was supposed to be her Trials of Knighthood last week,” Kit said solemnly. “Presumably killed by Black Sun, but why would her master have interrupted her trials for that?”

Quinlan said firmly, “I can’t prove anything.”

The three of them understood the ‘back off’ and respected it, even though Eeth scowled.

“You will tell us if there’s something we can help you with,” Kit said firmly, and Quin’s ‘big siblings’ left it at that and let him finish his meal with peaceful company.

Me’haran? [What (the) hell? (Mando’a)] Jango stared at the jetii [Jedi person (Mando’a)] .

She just…nonchalantly munched on the petals from the flower she’d plucked, waiting patiently for his response.

“You’re offering to take me to your sister,” he said aloud. “So I can fight her for my bes’bev [Mandalorian flute that doubles as a weapon (Mando’a)] back.”

She paused, swallowed a petal. “Ner tat’ika. [My little (biological) sibling. (Mando’a)] ”

A chill ran up his spine at the Mando’a. “Me’ven? [What? Huh? (Mando’a)] ”

“She’s younger and a biological sibling? Did I mess that up? I’m better with Taung than I am with the modern dialects.”

“Better with Taung,” he echoed slowly. That language was basically ancient Mando’a.

She shrugged, brushing off her fingers. “I’ve never gotten to use the modern variants much. Visiting Mand’oriya [Mandoria, the primary Mandalorian community on Coruscant (Mando’a)] by myself distressed my escorts.”

He checked his HUD, but they were the only persons in the garden, and the astromech was passing nearby, not observing. “Escorts?”

Something about Labooda’s hesitation felt like that had been a slip. “…There was reason for them, especially before—”

The way she cut herself short was definitely catching a slip.

While nothing could reverse the way they’d mishandled Galidraan, there was value in allying against the shared enemy that had set the jetiise [Jedi (Order) (Mando’a)] and Haat’ade [True Mandalorians (Mando’a)] against each other in the first place. Information helped with that. Jango pressed, “Before…?”

She shook her head.

Before he could decide if he wanted to push further, an electronic screech broke the night air.

Jango turned sharply, spotted the astromech yelling for help in binary. Not a usual function for R2 units.

“Me’haran? [What (the) hell? (Mando’a)] ” the jetii [Jedi (person) (Mando’a)] muttered, looking around with a frown. Seeking the astromech’s handler, he assumed, though his HUD made clear there wasn’t one. She took a few tentative steps towards the screech.

And tripped over the astromech.

Jetii [Jedi (person) (Mando’a)] Labooda landed well, obviously knew how to fall safely, but the blatant confusion remained as she peered around.

“Are you blind?” Jango blurted, grabbing her arm to stop her from falling over the astromech again.

“Me’ven? [Huh? (Mando’a)] ”

The cackle of electricity caught his ear as the astromech prodded her with its electric welder.

“Cut that out!” he snapped to it.

But her attention focused onto the droid. “Oh. Hello there.”

The R2 unit spat an expletive at her and kept yelling for security.

“Please stop that. This is a guest, not an intruder.”

But it was far too late for that, and Jango kept his hands a bit away from his side, fingers spread, as security forces arrived with blasters drawn.

“I apologize for the misunderstanding,” Labooda said easily. “This Mando is my guest, for Jedi business.”

The guards exchanged uneasy glances.

“Your guest, Master Jedi?” asked an approaching young man who the others looked relieved to see and defer to. “Then we must make amends for our rudeness.”

“That isn’t necessary,” Jango said for himself.

“I must insist, Mando. Watchman Labooda has yet to have proper rest since her arrival a few days ago.”

“I’ve napped,” she demurred.

“And I’m sure your guest would prefer you both be refreshed, for handling whatever Jedi business he’s here for.” The words were polite, but the tone was no-nonsense and firm.

Jango could have removed himself or even demurred to staying on his ship, but that would be needlessly antagonistic. Naboo was pretty close to Kamino, enough that playing nice with the authorities could give him a good ‘home’ base for hunts, without antagonizing his owners…

He’d have to apologize to Taun We for being late to pick up Boba, but she wouldn’t mind. She’d probably even prefer he tolerate the bureaucracy.

Jaster would’ve stayed.

Jango’s armor hid his flinch. Some of the trainers for the ade [children (Mando’a)] had ties to the same group that had killed all Jango’s parents, and he still hadn’t figured out what he could do about that.

Ka’ra [stars; council of deceased leaders who watch over Mandalorians (Mando’a)] help him, he wasn’t even sure what he could do to help himself. Even getting Boba free of the masters would be a blessing.

He still paused, though. Why did the man call the jetii [Jedi (person) (Mando’a)] a watchman?

“Jedi Watchmen are…ambassadors, of sorts,” the jetii [Jedi (person) (Mando’a)] herself said, in answer to the unvoiced question, “for sectors that warrant consistent Jedi presence.”

“Your guest didn’t know that?”

“Watchmen are rare, Captain Panaka, and I was only appointed to the position yesterday. They know me as a knight.”

The lie was so casual that she had experience with information management. Paired with how readily she read others’ thoughts…that had implications. Especially in light of how her sister was a berserker and even Dooku hadn’t known.

Jango accepted the offer of a bed and meal, fully expecting to get escorted to some sort of cell, and was pleasantly surprised to be shown to a suite befitting a foreign dignitary. The only bug in the room was token, in open on the table—polite even by Mandalorian standards.

He eyed the room. The jetii [Jedi (person) (Mando’a)] hadn’t had a chance to tell them who he was, so this wasn’t from his hosts knowing he’d been mand’alor [sole ruler, king of the Mandalorians (Mando’a)] , a lifetime ago. All they knew was a random Mando had shown up, allegedly a guest of their newly resident jetii [Jedi (person) (Mando’a)] , and they’d treated him as a guest…while conveniently buying time for any target he might be hunting to go to ground.

Clever of that Captain Panaka. If Naboo did prove to be a good public ‘home’ base, Jango would have to keep that in mind.

Vos had evidently learned his approach to teaching from Saa, which had some implications that would be interesting if Eirtaé were the sort to gossip. After all, Saa had been stationed as Watchman for the Kiffex system since Tholme left it with Vos, something like two decades ago, and the sheyf’s behavior meant communication had probably been restricted for most if not all that time. So how did Vos know her so well?

Jedi—or at least some Jedi—must have unofficial communication channels. Eirtaé made note of that, as something to be aware of for the future as she figured out what in the galaxy to do about the Sith issue.

She couldn’t help that she’d been born to be a tool, but ancestors help the fool who thought she’d cede to chains not of her choosing.

In fact… She eyed the reference text on various toxins that Master Saa had provided, after hearing mention that Eirtaé had interest in the topic—completely ignoring the Dark Woman’s mildly expressed suspicion regarding why. The text was specifically about natural poisons—colloquially speaking—not synthesized ones, with excellent organization and cross-referencing, and a level of detail that made Eirtaé’s fingers itch for a nice shot of rum to nurse while she studied.

The careful encryption, list of authors—some of whom were from millennia ago—and degree of detail about effects on Force-sensitives (depending on various factors) were telling. Even with Saa being listed as one of the authors. “Should you have shared this with me?”

The Dark Woman cast Eirtaé a sharp look. “Which version did you give her?”

Master Saa didn’t so much as flinch. “I gave her what the Force told me to give her.”

The other Jedi settled, apparently trusting Saa’s judgment regarding the Force even though she’d distrusted Saa’s judgment in giving Eirtaé the text in the first place. Because sure, someone’s judgment being dubious in practical reality made them trustworthy on esoteric Force stuff.

Thank the ancestors that Eirtaé’s parents never gave her to the Jedi Order. She couldn’t imagine having to manage the tool angle while also having to deal with this sort of nonsense. At least Panaka’s was perfectly understandable ego, after the disasters left him fearing his self-awareness of his own competence.

The idle thought caught her attention for further consideration. Panaka had gotten his position under King Veruna, who had been openly corrupt. Keeping his job through the regime change meant he had connections of some sort.

Eirtaé double-checked that this particular data reader was the one without even the hardware required for a HoloNet connection, and then made a note to look into Panaka’s connections to Palpatine—and to look for openings to leverage that to her own advantage.

Chapter Text

Anakin eyed Ryoo by the morning light. She was stirring something simmering on a back burner, her sleeves and hair tied back, and something felt different about her today.

“There’s sweet porridge in the cooling unit,” she said.

He flinched and tried to ignore the fear that flared from being caught at doing something he shouldn’t have been. “Sorry.”

“There’s no law against standing in doorways, and it’s only rude when you’re intentionally blocking someone with it.”

A timer went off. She peered in the oven, eying the contents critically before shutting it and resetting the timer for an hour out.

And something still felt different, maybe even wrong. “Are you okay?”

Her frown was confused, not upset. “I’m fine. Best I’ve felt since I got here.”

Why would that be true? He chewed his lip, remembering… “Because Master Tholme is gone?”

“What? No. I don’t mind him. He plus Winnie—that, I’ll avoid, if I can. They feed off each other something awful and just barrel past their usual boundaries.” Comprehension flared. “Oh! I think I know what you’re noticing.”

She climbed the counter and grabbed a small jar from the cabinet up there before hopping down. “Don’t taste. Just smell.”

He accepted the jar and opened it enough to sniff. Fruity, earthy, with something he couldn’t identify. It smelled edible, but something about it was giving him a bad feeling.

“That’s hsuberry. It’s the original source for the chemical compound that’s the basis of standard Force inhibitor drugs.

“Now, it doesn’t necessarily block the Force—not by itself—but it does muffle it, make it quieter. In my case, it means I can be around people without having to choose between getting cranky or getting a migraine. In your case, you might find it helpful as a learning aid, so you can learn how to do things without being quite so overwhelmed by the Force’s yelling.”

Anakin nearly dropped the jar. “You hear it, too?!”

“No,” Ryoo answered gently. “I mainly hear other people, not really the Force itself. That means I’ve overheard a little of what you do, but through you. I can only imagine how loud it must be for you.”

That reminded him of how confused Obi-Wan was at how Anakin did things. “The Jedi hear like you, don’t they?”

She pulled a large bowl from the cooling unit and two small dishes and spoons from the cabinets. “Can you explain what you mean by that?”

Oh. “You said I hear the Force yelling at me, but you hear…something else. Because of the Force, not the Force itself.”

“You’ll have to ask them. I believe some Jedi actually do hear the Force directly, but I’ve never overheard it from them. It might just be their training, making it quieter.” Ryoo shrugged, served them each a bit of the ‘sweet porridge’, and glanced for him to join her at the table.

He obeyed. The taste of breakfast reminded him of mush, though Mom’s had never been this sweet.

“Oh! I almost forgot.” Ryoo grabbed something else from a shelf—a spice shaker—and sprinkled something reddish brown on her porridge before passing it to him. “Taste it on your finger,” she suggested as she stirred it in.

He did. The hot kick was familiar as the nuanced flavor wasn’t. It would taste fantastic with the sugar. He dumped some into his breakfast. “This is wizard! Thanks!”

“I should’ve thought of that sooner. Jobal’s going to be annoyed if she finds out we haven’t been accounting for your palate in what we serve you. Food—or rather, feeding others what they’ll enjoy, until they’re satiated—is a hobby of hers, maybe to the point of compulsion. I make a point of not digging in her head to find out. There are some things that are just too cruel to do without permission or necessity.”

Okay, that was…a lot of words. He stared at Ryoo blankly as he tried to keep up. He was pretty sure he’d missed something, but “So you take the, uh, berry stuff to be nice to people?”

She gave a nod. “Nice to others, nice to myself. It’s all about the balance of who you want to be in the context of what you can do and where you are. Like, Tholme? His job is to learn things that people want to keep hidden and then use what he learns in a way that benefits the Jedi Order.”

“That sounds like an overseer who looks for the slaves’ secrets. Sometimes the overseer uses them, himself, and sometimes he tells the masters, and…” A lump built in Anakin’s throat. Watto didn’t do that to Mom, no, but what about Kitster? Aimee? Did Jira ever get the cooling unit he’d promised her?

“Similar action, different context. Tholme isn’t trying to force anyone to stay in the Order. He’s mainly trying to prevent anyone from harming the Order…or themselves in a way that would also harm the Order. It’s defensive, not offensive.”

They ate in silence for a bit, as he thought about what she’d said. “Like how you can use a blaster to kill someone to steal their water, or to kill someone who’s trying to steal your water. Both mean you’re killing somebody, but one of them’s hurting someone who hasn’t hurt you, and the other one’s hurting someone who’s trying to hurt you.”

Ryoo smiled. “As you say. Now, what Tholme does? I could be very good at that sort of thing.”

Anakin didn’t understand her point.

“I would hate it. I don’t want to play with people. I didn’t even want to hide Jobal from her father. It was just… He has a lot of enemies. Hiding her was safer. He would’ve even preferred that, if I’d given him the choice. I still hated it. And that was protecting a person, not an organization.”

Oh. Oh. “So…you don’t want to do the things you can do with the Force, so you eat that berry so you can’t do them?”

“Pretty much. I have an orchard of hsuberry trees, my own presses for the fruit. Mix my own recipes.”

What would that feel like, to be unable to hurt anybody with the Force? “Could you make one for me?”

“Of course. I’ll need a blood sample, and to talk to Jedi Kenobi about what you’ll need to still be able to do with him, to ensure I don’t complicate a Force ability you’ll be wanting to use.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Anakin blurted. “I mean, I want to try that, too, but… What about stopping all of it? Could you do that for me, too?”

She startled. “You want full blockage, not just muffling?”

In case I end up a Sith, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t get it past his throat. “Yeah. Just to see what it’s like? How do normal people see everything?”

The way Ryoo stared at him made him wonder if she could still hear more thoughts than she’d suggested, even with the hsuberry. “…I’ll need the blood sample and talk with your teacher for that, too,” she said slowly, “and I don’t think that would be safe for you, not with your strength in the Force. The shock of being blocked or of regaining access could kill you.”

“Oh.” He licked the last of breakfast from his bowl. “Um, could you make it anyway? Just in case?”

She glanced towards the cooler, offering more food.

He shook his head, refusing. “You know Padmé was killed by a Sith, right?”

“I didn’t. You think a blocker made for you would work for an unknown Sith? Probably, but with your strength… They’d most likely die from overdosing.”

She didn’t know. Guilt pulled at his shoulders.

He stared at the table. Padmé was still nice to him, even after everything, but something was weird in her head. Obi-Wan, though, didn’t get mad at him despite how he didn’t like when Anakin talked about this. That helped him admit, “I, uh, think the Sith was me.”

Anakin fought not to squirm as he waited for Ryoo to react. She held herself still, and the Force wasn’t giving him any clues about what she felt, either.

After a few long seconds where he could hardly breathe, she briskly wrapped the rest of her breakfast, set it in the cooler. “Come.”

She didn’t sound angry.

He obeyed, fighting the anxiety. She didn’t have the right to hit him—and he was a person, now, not property.

And he still fell into fear as she opened a cellar that led into the dark. She found a nearby light switch, revealing stone stairs that led down…

She glanced back at him, gave a double-take. “I apologize. My equipment to get the blood samples is down here. Mixing up the doses will have to wait until I get home—and I still need to talk to Jedi Kenobi, to find out how you need the training one to work—but we can start this now. You tell me what you fear other-you did, and I’ll help you with what you need to feel safe about it, all right?”

Tears pricked his eyes as relief bubbled through him. She was listening. She wasn’t ignoring the danger like everyone else, but she was going to help him do something about it! “I–I–I’m sorry I killed Padmé.”

Anger spiked in Ryoo, then, and she went down a few steps, putting them closer to eye level. “Now, you listen to me, Anakin Skywalker: It doesn’t matter what some alternate version of you did in another version of history. You are you. Not him. You’re only responsible for what you have done. Actual actions, not possible ones. You hear me?”

“He was me, though.”

“And in some other version of reality, I ran away from home as a child and only met Winnie as an adult because she sought me out. She needed someone with my talents who wouldn’t talk to the family. That me was also a spaceport doxy, hooked on spice, and met Tholme while helping Winnie save her sister.”

His skin felt hot and tight, and tears blurred his eyes.

Ryoo studied him. “That woman I just described? We both might’ve started as the same girl, once upon a time, but she was not me.

“I never ran away from family, I met Tholme in Holonet news chats, and I have never tried spice. My clients… Suffice to say I’ve had more freedom and choice than she ever did.

“I did help Winnie save her sister, just like that other me. We both had Jobal. We both chose to give up our friendship with her father for both their safety. But I am not the same woman she was.”

She poked his nose, ignoring the snot from his crying. “And you, Anakin, won’t be the same man he was, either. You might make some of the same choices. You might even make some of the same mistakes. But you’re only responsible for those choices and mistakes you make, not the ones he did.”

The tears kept coming, no matter how hard he tried to stop them. “Can–can I have a hug?”

Ryoo hugged him tightly, holding him secure and safe against the universe.

She hugged like Mom.

Anakin wasn’t in the kitchen.

Obi-Wan Kenobi stared at the empty space a moment, then stirred whatever was in the saucepan before it burned any further. It smelled like a lost cause, but maybe it was supposed to?

Probably not. He moved the saucepan off the heat and turned off the cooktop. Maybe he could clean it before Jobal got up and found it.

“Everything all right?”

Obi-Wan jumped, startled, and belatedly noticed Master Billaba—Depa—in the Force, too. Her braided hair and robes showed she’d been up for long enough to freshen them, so he asked, “Have you seen Anakin?”

Distance flicked through her gaze. “He’s with Ryoo.”

She took the spoon from, poked the saucepan contents, and smirked a little. “She cooks like Rurylis.”

Who?

“EduCorps, helped Master Dagwa manage Sar, after they realized she was damaging herself.” She prodded the saucepan again. “Basically has to use a slow cooker because she burns anything that needs steady attention. Feemor’s better, though he doesn’t care for doing it.”

Depa blinked at him, abruptly appalled. “You don’t know who Feemor is?”

Obi-Wan wasn’t certain he’d even heard the name before. “I’m afraid not.”

She set the spoon down and strode for the stairs. Obi-Wan followed, concerned about the tension in her back even while he was confused about her reaction.

Sola was sitting up there with a data reader, beside Master Qui-Gon fumbling with a stylus. She smiled at them. “Masters Jedi?”

“Obi-Wan doesn’t know Feemor,” Depa said shortly, directly to the ghost.

Qui-Gon visibly reared back in surprise, looked to Obi-Wan, then…deflated. «I disavowed him.»

“So? It’s bad enough that I’m having to tell Obi-Wan stuff like “You can learn to do more with your affinity for the Unifying Force’ and ‘EduCorps can help you with educating yourself and your padawan.’ You robbed him of Feemor, too?”

Maybe Feemor was a lineage relative, a padawan-sibling of his master’s?

Qui-Gon closed his eyes. «He was practically a knight already.»

“He was orphaned and you finished his apprenticeship,” Depa said baldly.

Obi-Wan had a padawan-sibling that he’d never even heard of? One who was Light and alive? “You had a padawan before Xanatos du Crion?”

Qui-Gon stiffened, opened his mouth to retort, then looked over at Sola and deflated. «I didn’t want my failure with Xanatos to smear him.»

“So you implied that he was the same sort, instead,” Depa retorted…and that was terrible. “You spent little enough time in-Temple that your misunderstanding of the politics is understandable, but he suffered for your foolishness, and you never even noticed.”

Obi-Wan wished her description didn’t fit Qui-Gon so well. “Does he know about me?”

“Yes. He was actually”—she grimaced—“in the process of getting authorization to take you as his padawan when Yoda shipped you off to Bandomeer.”

Even Qui-Gon stared at her, stunned.

Depa sighed and adjusted her shoulders. “To be fair, I don’t think Yoda knew. Temple Guards answer to the Council of First Knowledge, not the High Council.

“And even if Yoda did know… Older, well-trusted masters are permitted intercede to prevent what they perceive as poor fits. It’s supposed to be an emergency tactic to discreetly sidestep detrimental or abusive pairings without traumatizing the child involved. It’s not working out that way in practice, but the intentions behind it are good.”

An unexpected voice added, “Tholme shipped the youngling I wanted as padawan into Hutt space.”

Knight Labooda?

Obi-Wan sidestepped away from the surprise as Depa pivoted, lightsaber already on. Her sharp gaze snapped to their surroundings, out the window, as if expecting a threat.

“What did you do?” Depa demanded.

That was…an odd reaction.

Knight Labooda strolled over to the data reader and stylus Sola was using for communicating with Qui-Gon. “Clever.”

“Sar,” Depa warned.

“You and Master Jinn are getting along, then?”

Sola glanced from her to the rest of them. “Uh, yes?”

“Sar!” snapped the high councilor, eyes narrowed.

“Haj dai, rah’eni? [Yes, sibling? (Dai Bendu)] ”

The Force-based nuances to the words brought memories back, though Obi-Wan hadn’t used that language since the crèche.

Depa threw Sar out the window.

Another Force presence appeared in the room as Obi-Wan blurted, “What—?!”

The odd muffling of the Force presence warned him the newcomer was an armored Mandalorian before he turned and saw the armor that made his pulse spike. “Su’cuy [Hi (Mando’a)] ,” he said carefully.

The Mandalorian, whose armor matched a notorious bounty hunter’s, tilted his head with curiosity. “Su’cuy [Hi (Mando’a)] .”

Depa’s gaze flicked out the window and back to the threat in the room. “Sar camouflaged you, too?”

“I promised I wouldn’t take advantage of it.”

…Why was Depa so easily accepting that? She even put her lightsaber away.

«Sar wouldn’t have brought him if he were intending betrayal,» he heard, «and she’s excellent at corralling hostile individuals.»

Aloud, Depa asked, “Is there a problem, Ser Fett?”

“Just a question.” The Mandalorian who evidently was Jango Fett looked to Obi-Wan, then back at her. “Well, a few. You jetiise [Jedi persons (Mando’a)] learn Mando’a in school?”

She frowned a little, then glanced at Obi-Wan. “No. He learned from a friend.”

Fett’s head turned towards Obi-Wan again, and he could feel the Mandalorian’s regard. “Burc’ya be Tachi? [Friend of Tachi’s? (Mando’a)] ”

Why ask if Obi-Wan was friends with Siri? “I am,” he answered carefully, as the memory of her recent ‘If you ever loved me at all’ made his mouth dry. “You know her?”

“We’ve met,” Fett replied in Basic. “She learn the Mando’a from you?”

Siri knew Mando’a?

“She got that from Duchess Kryze,” Depa said, as if that explained anything.

When would Siri and Satine have even met? “They know each other?”

Discomfort flickered in Depa’s aura while staying clear of her expression, and she glanced pointedly to their audience.

The visor shifted, making clear its owner was looking between the two of them, before addressing her again. “Can your tat [biological sibling (Mando’a)] not see droids?”

What kind of question was that?

Depa paused and glanced to Obi-Wan before answering, “If by ‘tat’ you mean Sar, she does tend to perceive others by their auras in the Force, which droids don’t have, so she can overlook them when comfortable.”

Fett shifted position, the motion broadcasting the discomfort that his armor muffled. “She wasn’t afraid at me at all, then.”

“…Well, no,” she said slowly. “Should she have been?”

Fett commented, “I’ve killed you jetiise [Jedi persons (Mando’a)] before.”

Depa’s confusion didn’t waver, bringing Obi-Wan an awkward thought. “Is this one of those downsides to your Force affinity?”

Her confusion shifted to him, and then comprehension flickered. “More experience than affinity, I think. What matters for me are someone’s current actions and intentions, not whatever they’ve done in the past.”

“Like cin vhetin [Mandalorian “clean slate” concept] ,” Fett murmured, then indicated the window with a tilt of his head. “What was up with that?”

“She sometimes needs reminding to be polite by others’ standards.”

Obi-Wan stared at her. “…So you threw her out the window?”

“Gravity pulls her attention back to her body. It’s fine as long as you’re at least a few floors up. Some of her crèchemates shoot or stab her, instead—nowhere fatal, of course.”

“Of course,” Obi-Wan echoed faintly. Thank the Force his own crèche clan didn’t share that particular practice. “Do they do that to you, too?”

“I’m not from her crèche clan.” After neither of them fell for that dodge, she allowed, “I do get thrown, sometimes.”

Fett’s focus on her sharpened. “Free-fall’s socially acceptable for you jetiise [Jedi persons (Mando’a)] , then?”

Depa side-eyed the Mandalorian but admitted, “For some of us.”

He nodded in acknowledgment, subtly shifting into a ready stance. Obi-Wan put a hand to his lightsaber. Depa herself didn’t visibly react, though he sensed her focus sharpen.

Fett’s voice was still casual as he asked, “Where’s my bes’bev [Mandalorian flute that’s also a weapon (Mando’a)] ?”

She stared him in the visor. “Your what?”

“The flute,” Obi-Wan supplied.

She cast him an odd look, her aura glimmering with amusement. “What flute?”

Obi-Wan blinked in surprise.

Fett shifted his weight in what was probably irritation, but he asked lightly, “We’re doing this the fun way, then?”

Depa checked her lightsaber on her belt. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Then she was out the window.

Obi-Wan realized the Mandalorian had thrown her a heartbeat after Fett ignited his jetpack and stepped out after her.

In the Force, she was snickering.

“Were they just flirting?” Sola asked incredulously, reminding him of her presence.

Obi-Wan’s automatic denial died in his throat. The infamous Jedi-Killer of Galidraan had been polite, even friendly, despite his justified grievances against Jedi. Depa herself was blatantly playing with him—by fighting, no less.

With how she’d summarized her expertise last night… If she had gotten the assignment to guard Satine during the Mandalorian Civil War, just how differently would she have handled it?

And so Obi-Wan admitted, “I’m not sure.”

Chapter Text

Jedi falling from windows wasn’t an unfamiliar sight for Padmé, but only when more vertical than horizontal. The tan robes flying out the window had her scrambling to get up and to the speeder—carefully, to avoid waking up her parents in the next room, but quickly.

When did Knight Labooda even arrive?

The dock wasn’t far from her room, but the controls took some fumbling to manage—she was so close to the right size!

By the time Padmé reached Knight Labooda, the Jedi was already swimming back.

The Jedi pulled herself onto the speeder and waved away further concern. “I needed that.”

Padmé stared, confused.

Then another Jedi flew out the window. An armored Mandalorian followed her, jetpack burning.

Jango Fett. That was Jango Fett, who would kill Cordé and try to kill her and—

“Huh,” Knight Labooda said, eying the ripples left by Councilor Billaba’s initial splash before she’d leapt up and started wrestling with Fett in the air. “Usually she gets aimed at walls.”

Padmé wished she had her blaster, despite how the way Fett was using a grapple line reminded her of Torrent’s spars more than actual fights. “…What?”

“To get her attention,” Knight Labooda explained, as if that made sense. “My crèchemaster stopped using walls with me after the first one I went through.”

…Went through?

The Jedi absently continued, “It was an outer wall, too, and a crèchemate had already died down a level shaft, so they panicked something awful. I don’t remember what I did, but their distress…”

As if she could have possibly deserved physical abuse? “…Your crèchemaster threw you so hard you broke the wall?”

“Of course not,” she retorted. “All that broke was… I think a hoverbike and a leg? Or maybe that was the time I helped Eeth catch a homicidal drug runner… I wasn’t supposed to be there, of course, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it without endangering more people, and corralling individuals is something of a specialty of mine.”

The more that Labooda said—and the more that Billaba traded blows with Fett—the more convinced Padmé was that giving the twins to the Order would’ve been a mistake. No wonder poor Obi-Wan lacked self-preservation. Dear Shiraya.

“Regardless,” Padmé said carefully, “throwing you at a wall was out of line. If someone wants your attention, they’re fully capable of using their words or tapping your hand.”

“Oh, that doesn’t…” Labooda reconsidered her words. “When you have a vision, can you see what’s actually beside you, or do you need help to get your focus back on conventional reality first?”

‘Conventional’? “You speak as if reality is subjective.”

Labooda shrugged and watched Billaba slam into a boulder. “We do all perceive different parts of it.”

A blaster bolt missed Billaba by a hair, and the councilor visibly twisted so her lightsaber wouldn’t damage Fett’s jetpack and jumped on air.

Padmé stared. “What?”

“Niche Force skill. She’s better with it than most. It helps her get away with so much.”

…What?

“Like pranks.” Labooda tossed something through the Force at Billaba. “A few months back, she stole Master Yoda’s gimer stick and set it in the Archives with a plaque calling it an ancient artifact.”

Why was the Jedi even telling Padmé all this?

Billaba landed lightly on the speeder’s nose, and Fett drew up short before he plowed into her. The pair paused, considering Padmé.

“Open fields to the west,” Fett said. “Looks like livestock.”

Billaba glanced to the sun and headed in the direction he’d suggested.

The Mandalorian himself paused and nodded a greeting to her. “Naber.”

Right. Padmé had already visited Kamino and Fett had agreed to help the Jedi and—

“What are you planning to do with all the scrap metal? From the droids?” Labooda asked, as if that were relevant to anything.

As if Padmé’s few steps to try to sabotage the war hadn’t already changed so much that Palpatine would surely change his plans and she couldn’t let him change his plans and—

Labooda sighed.

What had Padmé been thinking about again? The view here was lovely. “I love the water.”

“Good,” said the Jedi, whose name Padmé couldn’t currently remember and couldn’t bring herself to care about. The Jedi’s annoyance was her own problem. “You can swim after firstmeal.”

Sar carefully secured the Naberrie girl in a seat before piloting the speeder back to the villa. The mental directions from Depa kept that from being suicidal, as long as she prioritized caution over speed.

Swimming would’ve been faster, but Sar wasn’t about to leave the speeder unattended to get stolen. Thankfully, the bump into the dock was soft enough to avoid damage.

(She really wasn’t supposed to pilot anything. Ever.)

Ryoo Thule met her there, with a blindingly bright boy who could only be Anakin Skywalker. Sar stayed put as she worked her focus out of auras and back into her eyes—an example of why her expertise wasn’t supposed to be used in the field. The side effects meant it was best applied as discreet support in a secure environment, ideally with others around so the target was less likely to identify who was doing it.

It turned out that Skywalker was blond, blue-eyed, younger than she’d thought.

He also presented her with a problem. And it wasn’t his “What did you do to her?!”

She answered absently, “Distraction wasn’t working,” while pondering her options. The boy was definitely too young for her to remove that hook from his aura, herself. Was he even old enough to be a padawan yet?

The hook in the Naberrie girl was even worse, deeper and older, and it wasn’t the same type. Same source but different purpose, possibly from before her time travel.

And even that was nothing Sar could uproot yet, since Naberrie’s brain hadn’t finished developing, either. The most she could do was corral the consequences…maybe. She was a solo operative in the field, here, and she didn’t have the support structure that she’d had in-Temple.

At least her history of testing risky maneuvers meant she knew her limits better than most Jedi, but that hook in Naberrie meant Sar didn’t dare leave the one in Skywalker, too. Force only knew what it would fester into. Waiting for the pair to return to the Temple risked it anchoring to the point that they’d have to wait for his brain to stop developing before they tackled it.

He was very strong in the Force, so his aura could probably clear it subconsciously…

Sar poked with the Force, pinprick sharp enough to be pegged as an invader, to try to draw the aura into noticing the hook that definitely shouldn’t be there. Anakin’s brow was furrowed with a slight headache when she withdrew.

Hopefully, that would work. Otherwise, she’d have to either convince Obi-Wan to get an appropriate Healer team out here without admitting why, or tell him why and be obligated to snip the memory afterwards. Both options had consequences that she preferred avoiding, when possible.

She then turned her attention to drawing further back into her skin. Destabilizing herself, the first time she openly took advantage of her legal autonomy, would be a great way to spend the rest of her life institutionalized.

Sar was capable of staying as stable as she wanted. The main problem was that she didn’t always remember why she bothered. Viewing things through the Force was so much more accurate than her eyes.

Physical senses were certainly differently informative, though. For example, the Force wasn’t what showed her Ryoo was frowning between her granddaughter and Sar, possibly able to see the thread that was connecting them for the moment.

Anakin himself was definitely able to see that thread, judging from where he was staring.

“It’s temporary,” Sar said, which was as much as she could explain without entering territory they wouldn’t be allowed to remember. “Not something you want to try yourself.”

The technique ran close enough to Sith coercion that it was blacklisted. It was supposed to be an emergency tactic for corralling a hostile subject who broke out of restraints. But Sar’s efforts to distract the girl from her anxiety hadn’t been working, and then she’d started plummeting into outright panic. Sar had seen someone Fall from that before.

Maybe the emotional instability was a fluke, a side effect of all the particularly stressful recent events, and the girl was fully capable of self-regulating. Sar didn’t know, though, and it was far easier and kinder to avoid development of harmful patterns in the first place, rather than letting someone slip entirely into a Fall before bothering to notice there was a problem.

(Sar tried to keep in mind that her specific expertise made her faster to notice such slippage than most. So did her personal experience with unintentional self-harm that nobody noticed until after the effects were permanent.)

“Is firstmeal ready?” she asked Ryoo. “Food’ll help.”

It would give her a good situation in which to slowly release the forced dissociation, too. This particular technique was purely mental rather than physical, so it suited the girl’s situation.

The problem was that it could become physical if used too much or too long, and that would permanently affect Naberrie’s brain development. Thus why Sar would probably face censure if the Temple found out she’d done this, even with the extenuating circumstances.

She could see Yaddle’s ears twitching now. ‘Sedate her, you could not?’ as if that would’ve done anything but postpone the spiral. Especially with how the girl’s aura showed echoes of fairly recent forcible sedation, so someone had already tried that.

And then there was that hook from a Darksider, which was too deep for Sar to determine the purpose or effects, not without digging. Digging would damage a child.

Sar’s sigh was purely mental. She made herself repeat it aloud, to prevent a slip into bad habits. She was going to have to figure out more tactics for anchoring herself, since evidently she was going to be use this part of her expertise more than she’d expected. It wouldn’t be reasonable to expect the Naboo to help her.

She was here as a Watchman who could catch the Force-sensitive queen when her sanity slipped, potentially to the point of legally mandated incarceration. Even if she succeeded at keeping the Naberrie girl from slipping that far, Jedi-Naboo relations would still likely end up…awkward. Even most Jedi took issue with her expertise, when they noticed it. Slipping too far into her natural inclinations would only worsen that.

“Anakin?” Obi-Wan entered with another Naberrie girl. This one was a few years older than Padmé, so it was the other one Sar had met years ago. The girl had some disability, didn’t she?

The boy perked up. “Obi-Wan! Ryoo said she can make stuff so the Force isn’t so loud for me so I can learn better!”

Obi-Wan blinked in surprise.

Sar hesitated, but checking was better than letting the boy make the same sort of mistake she had, at his age. “As an intermittent tool, or as long-term medication?”

“Tool,” Ryoo answered, herself. “Just to help bridge perception differences when learning, to reduce miscommunication. Overuse will make it less effective. If he wants something permanent, he can ask once he’s of age by Jedi standards.”

Good. Sar had figured out how to fiddle with her body chemistry several years before anyone taught the basics, and the result… Well, the Halls of Healing regularly warned even younglings about the risk of permanent damage now.

Awe filled the boy’s aura. “That’s possible?”

“Partial reduction of your Force sensitivity, certainly,” Ryoo answered. “Full removal…probably not, with how strong you are.”

Wariness was tinging the older woman’s aura, the sort that indicated comprehension of Sar’s specific role in the Order. She hadn’t actually been told, though, so Sar wasn’t obligated to do anything about it.

Ryoo even asked carefully, “May I ask what precisely your interest is in my granddaughter?”

“Prevention,” Sar replied immediately. The younger Naberrie girl was damaged, not malicious, and she was actively fighting against an uncontrolled Fall.

The older Naberrie girl asked, “Prevention of what?”

“Imprisonment,” Ryoo answered on Sar’s behalf. “The Jedi have a facility to isolate harmful Force users from anyone they might hurt. It was intended for policing their own, but Republic law allows for non-Jedi to be placed there, if their abilities are particularly…unusual and difficult to corral.”

That was more than most people knew about the Citadel.

…Why was the Skywalker boy relieved?

“Good,” he muttered in…Huttese, she had to borrow from Depa to recognize and understand. “So if I go Sith, you guys can stop me.”

Sar considered his strength in the Force. He was quite possibly correct, depending on the situation, but “Why are you concerned about that?”

“Um, because I’m pretty sure the Sith who killed Padmé was me—well, who I ended up in her first timeline.”

Ryoo shifted to be a bit between Sar and the boy.

Relax, she borrowed Depa’s knowledge to sign to the Naboo woman as she told the boy, “You shouldn’t be so open about that. Some Jedi can’t differentiate risk from reality.”

Which was why, if Sar’s talents had been better known in the Temple, she would’ve had to engage in blackmail to be able to leave. Too many would’ve assumed her incapable of working on her lonesome, just because Force-sensitives like her usually couldn’t.

Depa had far more patience for nonsense like that than Sar did. Fallacy of probability wasn’t even rational.

“Oh. …Is that why they said I was too afraid?”

…More than one person on the high council had called fear a problem in a young newly-freed slave? How Depa put up with that degree of lunacy on a daily basis without revealing her ability to beat them into a pulp, Sar had no idea.

Granted, the ringleader was probably Yoda, who genuinely meant well, and Depa did put more weight on intentions than she did. Sar herself only respected intentions if someone bothered to adjust their actions when their outcomes failed to match.

The frustration bled off as she became aware of it—a side effect of how she’d damaged herself when young. Sometimes, it was useful. Sometimes, it complicated her identifying what precisely was causing an emotion so she could process the cause properly. It was rather uncomfortable when she did something inherently manipulative like cry.

But this was one place where she knew precisely what annoyed her: at least half the High Council were so-called ‘traditionalists’ who didn’t even know that ‘passion’ historically meant ‘suffering’, not ‘intense emotion of whatever kind’.

That would be silly to vent here, though it did connect with something that the boy would probably find it helpful to know. “There are a lot of ways to interpret the Code and the Force. Look for what fits you. Learn the popular ways for your classes and for the idiots who insist their way is the only one that exists, but do what works for you.”

Obi-Wan was gaping at her, astonished.

Sar looked up through the wall at Qui-Gon, considering the merits of retaliation for how clearly he’d failed his padawan.

«Leave the ghosts alone.»

Depa’s order was firm, a warning that she would report Sar if she disobeyed, so Winnie and Tahl were off-limits to consult, too. Pity. That would’ve been an easy route for support.

At least Anakin’s aura looked to be combating the hook, so something was working properly. The rest, she’d have to test and watch for outcomes that fit her intentions.

The ”You aren’t going with them?” was hesitant, careful, with a bit of surprise.

Anakin glanced to Obi-Wan. He’d joined Sola by the window where she’d been watching her family leave. The other Jedi lady was with them, with Master Depa’s things, and had said they’d meet in Theed.

“No,” Sola answered. “I want to get a handle on talking to Qui-Gon before I do.”

Obi-Wan flinched.

Anakin’s eyes narrowed. Even Ryoo paused in the middle of passing him the last jar to sniff. (Well, wave towards his nose to sniff, since she insisted he shouldn’t ever smell unknown substances directly.)

Sola bit her lip, and she cast a glance at her grandmother.

Something about the scent from this last jar twisted his stomach. He shook his head.

Ryoo had called this a quick route for testing ingredients to definitely avoid. She made a note and started packing her kit away. “Thank you. I’ll compile these notes into some options for you and Obi-Wan to discuss.”

Anakin caught himself before saying thanks in slave creole, and it took him long enough to remember the Basic to make things awkward.

Sola cleared her throat. “I’m thinking I’ll stay the month at least. Maybe until you two are ready to go back home. My university has a remote option.”

“You can look for classes from other institutions your school recognizes, too,” Ryoo murmured while securing the last few jars. “Like the EduCorps.”

“Oh?” asked Obi-Wan as he served himself some water. Anakin was pretty sure Ryoo had brought out the extra pitcher and cups on purpose so he would do that.

“Officially, the EduCorps helps facilitate education, but many of their members run classes and design curricula.”

“Hmm.” Sola chewed her lip. “I wonder how old Padmé really is?”

Obi-Wan cast an awkward look at Anakin. “Ah—”

“I believe she’s near in age to that Mandalorian,” Ryoo said absently. She then paused for a few seconds before adding reluctantly, “Who legitimately tried to kill the councilor.”

Anakin frowned. The fight had been weird and scary, but… “Didn’t you hear them playing?”

She latched on her satchel shut and set it aside. “He has a reputation of hating Jedi for a reason. Conflicting with that reputation might very well be unsafe for him or us.”

“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan said directly, so Anakin wasn’t the only one confused, “but why do you think he’ll be harmed if he’s known to no longer hate Jedi?”

Ryoo grimaced. “I suspect he’s stepping outside his orders and will have to justify it.”

That sounded like—

“Wait, you’re saying that Mandalorian was a slave?” Sola asked first, incredulous.

“Possibly. It’s…not rare in the field, though the Mercenary Guild suppresses what they can.”

Obi-Wan hesitantly set a gentle hand on Anakin’s shoulder, then increased the pressure after he leaned into it. “You have experience, I take it?”

Ryoo gave him a flat look. “I have contacts. We exchange favors. I prefer helping as an apothecary.”

Sola turned thoughtful. “That Bothan guest you had for a few months was so careful to avoid us all. She was a former slave?”

“Possibly. I don’t ask Jedi about their missions.”

Wait, what?

Obi-Wan commented, “I didn’t realize you knew the Order.”

Ryoo sighed. “I don’t. Sometimes Healer-Knight Che discreetly sends me someone who needs a quiet holiday for a few weeks. I don’t ask for details, but I can’t help but notice when they have Jedi-trained shielding.”

“So you do still hear things, even with the berry stuff,” Anakin accused.

“Fewer things, and quieter than when I go without. That’s my preferred dose. I adjust it as warranted.”

That made her suspicion about the Mandalorian all the more confusing. “The Mando had a ship, though.”

“And you think that protects everyone he cares about, including from other bounty hunters?”

Horror turned Anakin’s veins to ice. Mom had always said there were many kinds of chains, and Anakin knew what masters could do. Why had he assumed that the Mando couldn’t be a slave?

Something else to dig at while trying to free his friends and the Jedi, and…slaves who were supposed to play autonomous lied.

Maybe, while he was here on Naboo, learning what he needed to start with and safe from whoever was watching the Jedi, he should look closer at Master Quinlan, too.